


Real True Imperfect Love

by indevan



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Eventual Romance, F/M, From Sex to Love, M/M, Refusing to admit feelings, RomCom tendencies, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-05-16 13:19:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 47,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14812127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: Bulma's bad day leads to her meeting a man whose emotional constipation would make Mr. Darcy go "whoa now."  This, of course, leads to more changes in her life and the lives of her friends





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i got the idea for this au the other day and i'm determined to see it through. this is also my attempt to write a fic that actually updates on a schedule so i'll be attempting to post every thursday!

Bulma Briefs was having a bad day.  It had started with a text from her father that told her she had to go to a meeting on the complete opposite end of the city.  Not only on the opposite end from her apartment, but it was also across the bridge. Normally, her father left her to her own devices when it came to her hand in working at Capsule Corp, but today she had had to go in his stead since they needed  _ one _ Briefs present.

The meeting itself was tedious but uneventful.  It definitely didn’t require her to rush out of the house with barely any preparation as she did.  Her makeup felt all wrong and these heels were the first ones she had grabbed out of her closet and she was certain that there was something up with them.

Afterwards, she had been intent on salvaging her day and decided to get lunch once she got closer to her side of town.  Everything around her seemed...riddled with health code violations. It wasn’t to say that she was in a  _ rundown _ part of town, except that she was.  The area just before the bridge back to West City proper was a small, urban area that fed into a boardwalk overlooking a shoddy-looking beach.  She had zero interest in walking those weathered planks so the food options there were out of the question. What she really wanted was a sandwich from the bistro down the street from her apartment, but fate was determined to stop her from getting it.

Or her car was, anyway.

Bulma rarely used her car.  Public transit near her was fine and, if need be, she could call a Lyft so she had no idea if her car would even have problems but it didn’t matter if the result was the same.  Her car broke down on a small stretch of road a good three blocks from the bridge. She tried to check her phone to call her roadside assistance company (which was, in part, owned by Capsule Corp) but her phone, of course, didn’t have reception.

She stared at the little circle with the line through it that replaced her usual, cheery little 4G marker and sighed in frustration.  How was she supposed to  _ use _ a service if she couldn’t get in  _ contact _ with them?

Feeling desperate, she got out of her car and, immediately, her ankle slipped to the side and she heard a crack.  Catching herself on the open door, Bulma stared down to see that her heel had snapped clear off.

“Oh, fan-fucking-tastic,” she groused.

This was not fair.  She was Bulma  _ fucking _ Briefs.  She was listed as one of Forbes 30 Under 30.  She helped her father develop technology that made them millions when she was  _ twelve. _  She was regularly featured in obnoxious gossip sites for her “wild, un-genius-like” behavior.  She didn’t  _ deserve _ this.

There weren’t many cars driving by, which was good since she was stalled in the middle of the lane.  She could only imagine what an angry local would or could do.

As if on cue because her day wasn’t bad enough, a beaten up Toyota Corolla pulled up behind her.  Bulma figured that this was her own version of “it could be worse, it could be raining,” but she at least knew better than to release  _ that _ into the universe.

“Hey, do you need help?”

The voice didn’t  _ sound _ threatening, but she still was wary as the driver got out of the car.  He was a young thing, maybe seventeen tops, and she dropped her shoulders, feeling foolish.  He was shorter than her and skinny, dwarfed by the giant, woven sweatshirt he wore.

“My car won’t start,” she said. “It died for no reason.”

And what a fright that was.  Her car making a sputtering noise and then just coming to a sudden, jolting stop.  Bulma had been worried that her airbags would go off but instead she was just jerked forward and then back, her seatbelt keeping her back.

“Oh.” The boy rubbed the back of his neck and looked around. “Do you need help pushing it?  This road gets kinda busy around four or five.”

“Push it where?” she asked, exasperated.

“Just to the side, um.  I can take you to a repair shop.  A friend owns it.”

“How can I  _ get _ there?”

Bulma knew she was being unfair to a kid who had just stopped to help, but this wasn’t useful.  Her car died and wouldn’t start and all of her engineering know how was apparently no use to whatever was wrong with it.

The boy pointed to a nearby bodega that featured a small parking area.

“If we push it there, I can drive you to the shop.  The owner’s got a tow truck she got from, uh, somewhere.  She won’t charge a fee.”

It sounded too good to be true.  Like this sweet-looking, unassuming kid was actually part of a marauding group of cannibals ready to lock her in their house and cut off her limbs for dinner.

Or maybe she was being dramatic.

“Sure,” she said. “But I don’t know if I can push it with a broken heel.”

He stared down at her feet and widened his eyes at her shoes.  Bulma wasn’t sure what the big deal was since, technically, these shoes were from last season, but maybe living out in boardwalk hell, they were impressed by such things.

“Oh, uh.  Just put it in neutral and I’ll do it.”

Him?  Bulma tried to hide her disbelief but she couldn’t have done a good job of it because the boy laughed.

“It’s fine.”

Still not reassured, she had no choice but to simply put the car in neutral.  What did she have to lose? The boy began pushing and, shock of shocks, he was able to push it on his own.  She supposed that they  _ were _ on a bit of a decline (or maybe that was the effect of her one, broken shoe), but he was able to push it into the small lot in front of the bodega.  Getting it into a space was a bit more awkward but he managed to mostly accomplish it. Bulma cocked a brow, impressed. What muscles was that kid hiding beneath that deeply unflattering sweatshirt?

“Got your keys?” he asked brightly.

She nodded and held them up for proof.  The boy grinned brightly and gestured back to his car.

“We can go.  The shop isn’t far.”

“Will the owner care if we leave my car here?”

He shook his head. “No.  I know him.”

He knew the owner of the bodega  _ and _ the owner of the repair shop?  Bulma’s suspicions mounted once more.  There was still a chance that this kid was part of some  _ Hills Have Eyes _ -esque situation.

“I live near here,” he explained as if sensing her disbelief. “I have class in a couple hours so I was going to drive over, but I have time to drop you off at the shop.”

“Class?” It was the mid-afternoon.  And the middle of June. Wasn’t school out?

“At the West City campus,” he reiterated. “College?”

Oh, so this secretly strong kid was a little genius taking college classes.  Bulma had been in that boat, starting college when she was sixteen. Her father wanted her to begin earlier but her sister interjected, saying she needed “socializing with her peers.”  She had also said to “trust her” on it.

“Wow.  So what are you, like, seventeen?”

His cheeks, already flushed from the heat, reddened further.

“Uh, actually I’m twenty-two.”

_ Well, shit. _

Now she felt bad.

“Oh, then.  Okay. Sorry.”

She decided to cut her losses and stop sticking her foot in her mouth while she had the chance.  Walking unevenly, Bulma went around to the passenger seat of the car and pulled on the handle. Locked.

“Sorry.  I don’t have a click-y thing,” he said.

The boy jogged over to his car and shoved the key in.  Once he unlocked the doors, Bulma slid into her seat, images of her sandwich slipping through her fingers.  The bistro closed at  _ four _ and now she probably wasn’t going to get back to the city before dinner.

“I’m Cabba,” he said, starting up the car. “Um, by the way.”

“I’m Bulma,” she said, even though it probably wasn’t necessary.

Cabba stared at her blankly.

“Briefs?” she offered.

“Uh, okay, last names.” He pointed to himself. “Oleracea.”

_ Oh, for fuck’s sake… _

She sighed, trying to keep the frustration out of it and Cabba took that as his cue to drive.

\--

The shop was called The Monkey Wrench and it looked like any auto repair shop she had seen in the city.  It wasn’t too horror movie, anyway, and Bulma was glad. There was a large garage attached to it and an enclosed front area that she realized, stepping into it, was thankfully air-conditioned.  A woman with short-cropped hair who appeared to maybe be in her early forties, tops, sat behind the counter. Next to her, sitting sprawled atop the counter, was a girl in ripped jeans and a grease-stained tank top.  The girl eyed her coolly over the top of her can of Arizona iced tea and Bulma lifted her chin, hoping to give her a good look if she was going to stare.

“Hey,” Cabba said. “This is Bulma.  Her car broke down near Uncle Nappa’s place.  I drove her here.”

The woman behind the counter raised a brow.

“What happened?”

Bulma realized that she was directing the question at her.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I was driving and the car just kind of sputtered and jerked to a stop.  Then I couldn’t get it to start.”

“Did you try to jump it?”

“I don’t have cables,” she admitted.

The woman turned to her apparent savior.

“Cabba?”

“Oh, uh, Raditz asked to borrow them for ‘personal use.’  I didn’t want to ask why.”

The girl on the counter shuddered.

“I can’t blame you.”

“Ugh,” the woman said with a groan. “I can’t believe I have to hear that about someone whose diapers I used to change--whatever, whatever.  I can go out with the truck and get it since  _ someone _ has a suspended license.”

She glared at girl on the counter who shrugged as if that wasn’t a big deal.

“Will it be long?” Bulma asked.

“Depends.  Getting it here will only take about a half hour or so.  Figuring out the problem is another matter.” She leaned forward and blinked her dark bangs from her eyes. “Do you trust me?”

Bulma wasn’t sure what she meant except that this woman was incredibly intense.

“What?”

“To leave your car here.  We can bring it in, handle the paperwork, take your key, blah blah, and call you with the problem later.”

“You can check our webpage for reviews,” the girl added. “We’re legit.”

She didn’t really worry about that.  Bulma never really worried about money.  If this place wanted to gouge her, it wouldn’t be any different than a place near her gouging her.  She would pay it with a shrug, regardless. Not that she’d let them know that.

“I guess,” she said, “But how will I get home?”

“Where do you live?”

“West Park.”

The woman’s eyebrows rose and she let out a low whistle.  With a shake of her head, she turned away from Bulma.

“Cabba?”

He shook his head.

“Sorry, Auntie Fasha, I have to get going to class.  I don’t have time.”

“Caulifla?”

“Suspended license, remember?”

The woman--Fasha, apparently--sighed.

“What good is having a drunken one night stand if the resulting child is going to be this useless?”

Caulifla batted her on the shoulder with the butt of her can.

“Love you, too, ma.”

Bulma waved a hand and shifted her weight back to her good shoe.  She really wanted to take her other heel off, but the thought of standing barefoot in an auto repair shop didn’t appeal to her.

“I can call a Lyft or something,” she assured her.

_ If I ever get reception… _

“To West Park?” Caulifla asked with a laugh. “From here?  Sure.”

At that moment, the door opened and Bulma didn’t bother to turn, even instinctively.  She was precariously balanced on her uneven shoes and she wasn’t interested in toppling over just to see who entered the shop.

Whoever they were pushed past her, throwing off her balance.  She teetered in the cloud of honestly good-smelling cologne the person was wearing and regained her composure to glare at the newcomer who  _ cut  _ her in line.

“Is my car ready?”

The voice that spoke was deep and raspy in a way that would normally send shivers down her spine if she wasn’t too busy having a terrible day that this man had just made worse.  The man who shoved by her wasn’t very tall. In fact, even without her heels on, Bulma was certain that she would probably be taller than him. He was broad, though, and she could see the serious muscles showcased by the tight t-shirt he wore.

Even so, he was a dick, so she had to be mad at him because this anger was one thing she could control about this day.

“I was in the middle of a conversation, Your Highness.”

“I need my car.”

“It’s done,” Caulifla said with a wave of her hand. “I assume we put it on your tab?”

He curled a lip. “Whatever.”

Fasha glanced at her daughter, who looked back.  Some time, during this exchange, Cabba left with a wave and nothing else--probably because he didn’t want to be late to class.

“I have an idea,” she said, leaning forward on the counter. “I have to go grab Miss Bulma’s car and bring it over here.  I can get you your key when I get back. And you can take her home since you  _ love _ going to West Park.”

The man turned, noticing her for the first time, and Bulma made a face.  Oh, she was so sure. Looking at him face to face for the first time, she was annoyed to see that he was good-looking.  Not attractive in a classical or even conventional sense but his thick, arched brows and strong jaw paired with high cheekbones and eyes like polished stone were captivating.  So he had to smell good  _ and _ be hot?  What a shithead.

“You’re Bulma, I guess?” he asked gruffly.

“Give the man a prize.”

His lip curled briefly again and he turned back.

“No.  Just give me my car.”

Fasha wagged a finger.

“Nope.  Be a nice person for once, Your Highness.”

He had to be someone Fasha knew well enough for her to tease rather than just the run of the mill customer who got his car fixed up.  The talk of a “tab” was obvious enough, but this just made it a certainty.

“You can treat yourself to one of those fancy restaurants afterwards since you love putting on airs,” Caulifla added. “I dunno why.  You aren’t a prince anymore.”

He turned his head so quickly Bulma was surprised that he didn’t give himself whiplash to glare at her.  Fasha, to her surprise in the limited time she had been acquainted with the woman, also looked peeved.

“Watch it, Cauli.”

A sore spot?  Truthfully, Bulma didn’t quite care.  This day was terrible enough without dwelling on these people’s dumb drama.

“Fine,” he said with a growl.  He turned back to Bulma and then, speaking as if uttering it put him in physical pain, he said, “I’m Vegeta.”

\--

In retrospect, getting into a car with a strange man was probably a dumb idea, but, after the day she’d had, Bulma was willing to take Fasha on her word and let this guy drive her home.

Vegeta, he’d said his name was.  Weird name. Weirder guy.

He was completely silent on the drive over the bridge.  At first, she was glad, since she was tired of dealing with things and talking to people.  But, after twenty minutes, the only sounds being the stereo system playing a Joy Division album got to her.  Bulma craved to fill the air with talk. Too much silence was torture.

“So they called you a prince,” she said. “Is that a literal title or a figurative one?  Like, did your dad own a bunch of used car dealerships or mattress stores?”

Vegeta’s response was to turn the volume knob up and she sat back, frowning and pouting.  Okay, fine.

“Do you live in West Park?”

“No.”

“You live over the bridge here?”

He picked his phone up to check the directions as if the gps app would will his car to get there faster.  Bulma sighed. She wasn’t happy, in fact she was miserable, but he could at least  _ try _ to be personable.

“I’m not normally over there,” she said, knowing full well that she was babbling but Ian Curtis’s voice was  _ not _ what she wanted to hear. “I had a meeting.  Not there. Further off.”

Again, nothing.  She sighed and slumped in her seat.  Where did this guy get off? She had the mother of shitty days and  _ she _ wasn’t being all taciturn and rude.

“I hope there’s nothing too wrong with my car,” she said, now simply thinking out loud. “What was wrong with yours?”

“Nothing,” he said, surprising her with an actual answer. “I was getting my oil changed.  Now will you please shut up?”

Her surprise at him actually speaking to her immediately faded to anger.

“Listen, buddy,” she said, already hearing her voice rise. “I’ve had a shitty day.  I had to rush to a meeting over an hour away. My car broke down  _ and _ one of my heels snapped.  Now I have to sit in a car with someone who has the social skills of a fence post so sorry if I’m babbling.”

She didn’t mention that he was doing her a favor, because he clearly wasn’t happy to do so.  Maybe her babbling wasn’t just her desire to fill empty air but to prove to this guy that, despite the circumstances, Bulma Briefs was a delight to be around.

At a red light, Vegeta reached across her and she almost slapped his hand down until she saw him go for the glove compartment.  It flopped open and he pointed to something near the owner’s manual.

“I keep electrical tape in there just in case,” he said. “It’s not perfect but it’ll probably keep the heel on your shoe.”

Bulma stared at him for a moment in disbelief.  He had been nothing but rude and grouchy and now this?  This sudden niceness? She reached forward and extracted the little roll of black tape.  She reached down to remove her shoe and carefully wrapped it around the heel. She put it back and closed the compartment.

“Thanks,” she said, really meaning it.

Vegeta shrugged and reached forward to turn the radio up again.

_ Love, love will tear us apart… _


	2. Chapter 2

“That sounds like only an adventure you would have.”

Chi-Chi ended her sentence with a knowing nod of her head and Bulma fought the urge to make a face at the younger woman.  After her harrowing day that ended with little fanfare (her knight in sour armor dropped her off at her apartment building and left with a grunted, “You’re welcome”), she had rushed to text her friend the details of her shitty day.  It wasn’t until now, nearly a week later, that they were able to get together in person to talk about it.

Right now they sat in one of their favorite brunch places, waiting on their food.  Three glasses of orange juice sat on the table, two in flutes and spiked with champagne and one with a plastic lid and straw for Chi-Chi’s four-year-old son.  Gohan kneeled up in his chair, humming to himself as he colored the kids meu they gave him.

Bulma was convinced that her friend had the best behaved kid in the entire city.  The few times she had had to watch him had proven that the only issue Gohan had was that he got scared more easily than other kids.  His newest fear, apparently, was kangaroos. When she told him that none lived here in the wild and that they lived on a faraway island, he made her look up on her phone whether or not they could swim.

“It was annoying more than anything,” she said with a wave of her hand. “One thing after another.  But I get my car back in a couple days so that’s nice.”

Fasha had called her the next day to inform her of the engine issues her car was having.  Bulma acknowledged the quoted price and let her do whatever. Truthfully, looking back without irritation of being  _ in _ the situation, she could clearly see how everyone she met helped her.

“I just can’t picture you in Saiyan Town,” Chi-Chi said with a giggle.

Bulma sipped from her champagne flute and cocked a brow.

“Saiyan Town?”

“That’s what they call that neighborhood by the boardwalk before the bridge.  Didn’t you know that?”

She shook her head.

“No?”

“You didn’t learn about the Saiyan-Acrosian War in history class?”

College was so long ago for her that Bulma honestly didn’t remember anything that didn’t pertain specifically to her majors.

“No?” she repeated.

Chi-Chi drew her finger around the stem of her glass and shrugged.

“There was a war or a coup or something twenty-ish years ago and a ton of Saiyan refugees from Sadala came over.  A lot settled here, in that area. The boardwalk is actually really nice. Not that I’d ride any of those rides. They’re death traps, I don’t care what anyone says.”

“Sadala has a type of bird that can only live there,” Gohan added helpfully.

Chi-Chi reached out to stroke her son’s hair, smiling a proud smile.

“He’s really into watching nature documentaries recently,” she informed her.

That explained the kangaroo fear, at least.

Bulma stared at her for a moment, scrutinizing her.  Chi-Chi knew way more about that part of town for someone who simply “remembered” something from history class.

“Hmm...you’ve been to the boardwalk?” she asked, keeping her tone light.

Chi-Chi didn’t seem to notice her suspicion yet.  She was too busy breaking out a bag of goldfish crackers from her bag to give to tide Gohan over while they waited for their food.

“Around five years ago,” she said, “but those places never change, you know?”

“Mhmm.” Bulma turned her glass over in her hand. “So were you  _ alone _ when you visited the boardwalk in Saiyan Town?”

Chi-Chi froze, finally catching onto what she was getting at.  She righted herself and immediately began fussing with her hair--a sure tell that she was nervous.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

It had been a shock to everyone in their circle when Chi-Chi of all people had gotten pregnant.  No one had ever known her to have a boyfriend and she wasn’t the type for brief hook-ups. Their friend Lazuli had wryly proposed immaculate conception, but they all knew it was nothing so fanciful.  What  _ was _ odd was that Chi-Chi had never mentioned who Gohan’s father was or if he even knew he had a kid.  Every now and then, someone (usually Bulma) would pull on that thread, but nothing ever came of it.  The boardwalk thing was new evidence.

“Is--”

“Bulma.”

She angled her stare to her son who was happily munching crackers and she reluctantly relented.  There would be a time to grill her about this, but it wasn’t when Gohan was in earshot.

“So tell me about the guy who drove you home,” Chi-Chi said with forced joviality.

Bulma almost said that maybe  _ he _ was Gohan’s dad but bit her tongue at the last second.

“Nothing to tell,” she said instead. “Prince Dickwad.”

Except for the shoe thing that  _ still _ confused her.  Not that it mattered nor did she  _ want _ it to matter.  Before Chi-Chi could press her further, the server arrived with their food and she didn’t have to answer any more frivolous questions about someone she wasn’t going to see again.

\--

Bulma stood outside of her apartment building, tapping in her destination to call a Lyft.  She could have waited in the lobby of her building but it wasn’t disgustingly hot yet and she wanted to enjoy the nice weather before the sun baked the streets and made everything smell like car fumes and grilled meat.

Fasha had called her that morning to let her know that her car was ready for pick up and, honestly, she was glad for it.  Bulma didn’t think she would miss something she barely used but somehow, in the week she was without it, she had had need for a car more than she had in months.  Which was, of course, how those things always went.

She was about to tap the button to submit her request when someone whisked her phone out of her hand.  Bulma turned, ready to use her skills honed by trips to the gym and self-defense classes with Chi-Chi on a would be mugger but instead she saw the guy from last week.  He was dressed in a pair of sweatpants that draped so nicely on his hips and a tank top that barely contained the expanse of his chest. Again, she felt a pang of disappointment that someone this hot had to be a grouchy asshole.

“Do you mind?” she demanded and grabbed for her phone.

“Don’t bother with a ride,” he said in a curt voice. “Fasha called me and is making me do it since it’s ‘on my way.’”

He made an annoyed sound through his teeth.

“You sound so thrilled to be in my company again.”

He shrugged.

“Whatever.” He paused.  Looked at her. “It  _ is _ on my way.”

That was a bit more than she got last week, so Bulma counted herself lucky.

“Why are you over here, anyway?  Don’t you live in--over the bridge.”

He let out a harsh little chuckle.

“You can say ‘Saiyan Town.’  We don’t care. And I was at the gym.”

Vegeta lifted the bag slung over his shoulder as proof.  He went to the gym over  _ here? _  Then again, didn’t Fasha say that he liked coming here?

“What gym?” she asked.

Bulma almost expected no answer but there was no stereo for him to turn up this time so he had no choice but to reply.

“The 24/7 Fitness down on sixty-third.”

“That’s my gym.”

She said it almost in an almost accusatory way like it was her turf, but it was more out of surprise.  Considering how eye-catching his looks were, she thought that she would have seen him. Then again, she tended to stick to cardio and she was sure those muscles of his weren’t built on a step machine.

“My car’s parked near there if you don’t mind the walk.” Vegeta looked down at her feet. “Looks like you have working shoes on today.”

“You ass!” she blurted before she could stop herself.

_ Right.  Maybe it’s best  _ not  _ to insult the guy doing her a favor. _

A forced favor, though, considering that these were Fasha’s machinations again.  Still, it saved her the cost of a rideshare, which seemed to be unfairly expensive to go over the bridge.

Truthfully, though, Bulma often made the walk to the gym so it wasn’t a great slog.  Not that she was going to let  _ him _ know that.

“So, what does Fasha have on you to make her do her dirty work?”

Like any other time he had been forthcoming, Bulma was surprised when he actually responded.

“Free auto repair.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s all that it matters to you.”

God, he was rude.  How did someone this pissy and grouchy actually survive from day to day without getting punched in the face?

They reached his car and she watched him unlock it.

“No Joy Division this time, right?” she joked.

Vegeta fixed her with a glare and she laughed as she got into the passenger side.  It was almost too easy to rile him up. He started the car up, the radio coming to life with a staticky pop.  This time a woman’s voice came out of the speakers.

“Who’s this?” she asked.

“Siousxie and the Banshees.”

He edged into traffic and Bulma settled back against the seat.  She pulled her bag onto her lap and fiddled with the clasp.

“You know that there’s music that exists after the late seventies and early eighties, right?  Some of it’s pretty good.”

“I like what I like.”

Well, that was fair, but who wanted to listen to music from a decade before they were even born?  It wasn’t like he could have nostalgia for it, right?

Or maybe he just liked it.  Bulma was never too into music.  She usually listened to whatever played on the radio or in clubs that she could dance to.

Other than traffic, the rest of the ride was uneventful.  Bulma wondered what Fasha really had on him to get him to do this.  Then again, if he was already going back home anyway, maybe it wasn’t a big deal.  Either way, she figured that she owed him twice now and she hated being in debt to anyone.

Fasha wasn’t behind the counter at the repair shop and neither was her daughter.  Instead a man came out of the connecting door to the garage when she rang the bell and he was--impressive.  He was well over six feet tall and hugely broad through the shoulders. His coveralls were bunched at his waist and the undershirt he wore beneath was sinfully too small, stretched almost threadbare over his impressive chest.  He had long, thick dark hair pulled back away from his face in a bushy ponytail.

At the sight of Vegeta, he burst into a wide grin.

“Ayy, Your Highness!” he exclaimed. “You  _ did _ bring her.”

This man was clearly friendly with him and, already, seemed more personable than Vegeta.  Bulma admired his sweaty muscles streaked with oil and grease and couldn’t help but wish  _ he _ was the one who somehow became her chauffeur.

“Is her car ready?” he asked irritably.

The man nodded. “Yeah.  Good thing you came by ‘cause I was about split.  I’ve got a date tonight.”

He made his way over to the computer on the counter.  When no one said anything, he pouted around the monitor.

“Really, Geets?  No ‘gee, Raditz, who’s the lucky guy’ or anything?”

“I don’t care.”

Even as he said it, Bulma saw his lip quiver a bit.  She also tuned in to the fact that hot, big and beefy--Raditz--had said “lucky guy,” meaning that her silent admiration of him would more than likely ever only go that far.

“Yeah, you do.  You’re curious.” He grinned.

Vegeta rolled his eyes and let out a scoff.

“I assume it’s the guy who you’ve been seeing for weeks and thinking no one’s noticed that you’re seeing someone.”

Bulma noted that this was the most she had heard him speak and that, somehow, these two were some semblance of friends.  Raditz’s face fell.

“What?  No. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Another scoff.

“Stop.  Just hurry up and ring her out so we can  _ all _ get on with our lives.”

Raditz laughed, apparently used to his nature, and cashed her out.  Part of Bulma wished she could leave a tip. Everyone at the shop had been super helpful throughout everything.

She took her car keys from Raditz and slid it back onto her keychain.

“Thanks,” she said, meaning it. “Good luck on your date tonight.”

He grinned brightly.

“Hey, thanks!”

She turned to Vegeta who stood there, arms crossed, and she wondered why he had stayed at all.  He could have just dropped her off but he was still here. She didn’t understand this guy, but she figured that it didn’t matter at this point.  It wasn’t like she was going to see him again except for maybe running into him at the gym. Even so, despite how much he made it clear that helping her filled him with agony, he  _ did _ do her a favor.  And there was the whole thing with the shoe.  Three favors. Shit. She would have to think of some way to repay him.  Somehow. In the event she ever saw him again.

“Thanks,” she said. “I owe you.”

He shrugged.

“Whatever.”

_ Or fuck you, then, _ she wisely didn’t say out loud.  Instead she just awkwardly waved at him, the keys jangling in her hand as she did, and walked out the door.

\--

Vegeta reasoned that he shouldn’t have been surprised when he came home to find his roommate shirtless and eating canned squid over the sink.

The apartment was still in the state of disarray that it was before he left for the gym.  In fact, it was somehow even dirtier than it was before. Empty bags of chips were strewn on their couch.

“Did you literally spend all day eating?” he asked irritably.

Kakarrot (or, Goku, as nearly everyone but him called him) turned around, wiping black ink sauce off of his chin with his fingers.

“Oh, shit, you’re back.” He suppressed a belch. “Guess I did.”

Vegeta fought down the wave of irritation that washed over him.

“You were supposed to clean while I was gone.  This place is an even bigger shithole than it normally is.”

This time he didn’t even bother to hide the burp and he swore he could smell the squid from where he stood.

“My bad.  I’ll get started now.”

He left the can of squid in the sink and began walking around their small living room to gather up the bags and other detritus that he had left in his wake.

“You’re in a crappier mood than usual,” he quipped.

Vegeta shrugged because it was easier than answering him.  While he knew he was never someone to have a sunny disposition, he had been even grouchier in the last few weeks without real knowledge as to why.

Maybe it was because of the anniversary coming up.  Twenty-three years since he lost his parents and brother and had to come here as a scared and filthy orphan.  The destruction of his home and deaths of his people that amounted to little more than a footnote on international news.  What he had to lower himself to. He used to be a Prince, goddamnit. Not that it meant anything here and now.

Now he lived in a crappy first floor apartment with a slob and had noisy upstairs neighbors.

“What took you so long anyway?” Kakarrot asked.

He crammed his trash in the garbage can, which meant that their apartment was only about as dirty as it was when he left this morning.

“Fasha made me drive that rich chick from West Park back to the shop for her car.”

Vegeta crossed to their fridge to grab a beer.  That is, if Kakarrot hadn’t finished the last them.  He spotted a lone bottle and glared at his roommate before extracting it from the fridge.

“So I had to stop and drop Bulma off,” he said as he searched the crusty expanse of their counter for the bottle opener because God forbid it stay in the drawer where it belonged.

“Bulma?  As in, Bulma Briefs?”

Kakarrot wet a paper towel and began half-heartedly scrubbing the countertop.  He grunted a response as he finally located the bottle opener.

“Yeah.  You know her?”

“Everyone does.  She’s like some genius but also one of those people who’s, like, famous for being famous.  Y’know?”

He brushed some crumbs into his hand and smiled at his handiwork as if this were at all impressive.  Sometimes Vegeta suspected that he purposely sucked this bad at cleaning their shared space just so he could do it instead.  When he was living with Nappa as a kid, he always had to clean up after himself and make sure the items in the bodega weren’t in disarray.  His childhood spent in the palace not having to do anything for himself quickly faded into his new reality back then.

Vegeta took a long pull of his beer and slammed it on the counter.

“Well, she’s a piece of work.  Never stops talking.”

Or decrying his  _ perfectly fine _ music taste.

“And she can’t be that famous if I don’t know who she is.”

Kakarrot snorted.

“No offense, Geta, but you barely pay attention to anything current.”

He scowled.  Even so, it wasn’t as if he lived under a  _ rock. _  Whether he knew her or not, he knew that Bulma was annoying.  She was incredibly attractive but appreciation of her looks was ruined when she opened her mouth to whine or spout some inanity.  He had met her twice and that was enough. Now he just had to be on the lookout for her whenever he was at the gym. Or maybe he was being a little dramatic.  Whatever. She was harmless, if annoying.

He took another pull on his beer and eyed Kakarrot.

“Your brother is still pretending we don’t know he has a boyfriend.”

Kakarrot had his leg lifted to try and stamp their trash down with one foot.

“Why can’t he just  _ tell _ us?  Or introduce him.  What’s the worst that we could do?”

Vegeta looked at the Cheeto dust on his boxers and the ink sauce stained around his mouth.  God, this was such low-hanging fruit that he couldn’t go for it.

“No clue.”

\--

Even after all this time, there was something comforting about being in a bar surrounded by people speaking the same language.  Vegeta sometimes went to bars across the bridge--not to  _ put on airs _ as Caulifla said, but simply because he wanted to--but there was a feeling of familiarity at the bars here.

“Drink up.”

Turles came, holding a series of shots between his hands.  He plunked them on the table and grabbed one for himself.

“More?” Kakarrot groaned. “I’m gonna need a banana bag tomorrow.”

Raditz reached for one and paused to cock a questioning brow at his brother.

“A what?”

“You can call and have someone show up at your place with a bag of, like, vitamins to put in...here.” Kakarrot trailed off in their language and tapped his veins. “I don’t remember that word.”

From what Vegeta gathered, he had gotten separated from his family when he came over from Sadala and wound up adopted.  When his adoptive father died, Kakarrot sought out his family and was slowly reconnecting with them. Which meant re-familiarizing himself with their language.

“My ma got them to come for me and Cabba when we turned twenty-one last year,” Caulifla said.

She grabbed two shot glasses and passed one to Cabba.

“That’s so fucking stupid,” Raditz said, rolling his eyes. “Just eat some fucking fried food and pound Ibuprofen like a normal person.”

Turles jerked his thumb towards him.

“Exactly.  Radi’s right.”

Kakarrot nodded. “You’re right.  I just like saying ‘banana bag.’”

“That sounds like a dumb, folksy thing to call a condom.” Turles laughed and paused to knock back his shot.

Vegeta chose not to engage in this ridiculous conversation.  He did, though, grab a shot from the center of the table. Turles, having a sweet tooth, had ordered them all lemon drops.  He didn’t care for it but booze was booze so he downed it in one go.

“Anyway, onto important shit.” Turles flicked sugar from the rim towards Raditz. “Who’s your secret boyfriend?”

He paused, shot glass tilted to his mouth, and looked away. “I don’t have a secret boyfriend.”

“Bullshit!” Caulifla, Turles, and Kakarrot yelled at once.  Even Cabba hid his smile behind his hand.

Raditz hunched his shoulders around his ears in a vain attempt to look smaller.

“We’re keeping it between us for now before involving all of the nosy people in our lives so shut up,” he groused.

Kakarrot nodded and drew his finger through a ring of condensation on the table.

“I know how that is.”

Collectively, the table groaned.  Vegeta stared at his empty shot glass, willing it to fill up again.

“Not this again,” Caulifla whined.

“Please,” Raditz agreed. “I can’t take it anymore.”

Turles pointed a finger down his throat and made a gagging sound.  Kakarrot sighed.

“I just wish I had closure.”

Another groan.

“Six months!” Caulifla exclaimed. “We had six, amazing months together!”

“And then she just disappeared from my life,” Cabba added, picking up the thread of the story.

“All of her social media is private or nonexistent so I can’t even see how she is!” Turles said dramatically.

Kakarrot pouted furiously, arms folded over his chest.

“I just wish I knew what I did!” Raditz threw himself backwards, nearly toppling his chair over as he pretended to swoon.

“Everything was going so well,” Vegeta finished.

Kakarrot looked at them all, betrayal evident on his face.

“Come off it!”

Turles shook his head and reached out to put a hand on his shoulder.

“Listen, Goku, didn’t you say she lived in West Park or one of the pricey places?  She probably wanted to slum it with a dude from Saiyan Town and then fucked off when she got bored.  I mean, she never wanted to meet any of us.”

“Rich bitch,” Raditz agreed.

The look of betrayal snapped immediately to anger and Kakarrot slammed his fist on the table.

“Don’t call her that!” he barked. “She was  _ nice _ and sweet and...I wish I just knew she was alright.”

Vegeta felt annoyance prick up within him.

“So instead you spend the next five years pining for her and annoying everyone around you?”

He couldn’t imagine living that way.  When he did go for someone, he went for no strings hookups.  It was far easier on everyone if there were no feelings involved.  He knew that it would be impossible but there was no way that he wanted to end up like Kakarrot, pining after some hopeless relationship he had for six months almost five years ago.

“I’m not pining.  I’ve gone on dates,” he said with a huff. “But...it’s--”

A door slammed as someone exited the bar and he shut his mouth.  Nearly everyone at the table and several other patrons at the bar all jumped.

“Shit,” Turles said.  He wiped a hand over his face. “I don’t think that’ll ever go away.”

Raditz nodded, his eyes shut.  Slamming doors sounding like gunshots.  Heat. So much heat and smoke. Coughing.  Calling for his parents but not finding them.  His hands ached and Vegeta looked down to see that he was gripping the end of the table so hard that his knuckles were turning white.  He let go and shook his hands out under the table, so no one could see.

“It’s weird how it was so long ago but not.” Cabba frowned. “I was born after and I didn’t get it at first.  Like I never understood why my parents--or when Uncle Nappa had to explain to me that you weren’t my cousin.”

He nodded towards Vegeta.  Nappa, a childhood friend of his mother’s, took him in when he made it over here as a scarred and sullen orphan.  How he adopted his brother’s kid as well when he and his wife committed suicide after being unable to deal with their memories.  How no one cared. He hated it. Hated how he was still affected by it physically and mentally.

Abruptly, he scraped his chair back.

“I’ll get the next round.”


	3. Chapter 3

Bulma had always been a curious person.  That was her reasoning, anyway, that night at the gym.  She always went at odd hours. When she was doing her own work and experiments, she often felt like a vampire, working late into the night only to fall asleep as the sun rose.  Since her father encouraged her to “take a more active hand” in Capsule Corp goings on, she had had to kick her nocturnal nature but some things didn’t change.

It helped that few people were at the gym at this hour anyway.

Definitely not grouchy jerks to whom she owed favors.

Still, after she finished her own workout, she got to thinking.  She squeezed some water from her bottle in her mouth before closing the topper and sliding it into her bag.  She slipped it onto her shoulder and meandered back towards the strength machines. There were a few sounds of weights crashing, indicating that  _ someone _ was over here at this hour, but she had no clue who it was until she saw him.

Vegeta  _ wasn’t _ the one slamming the weights down.  Instead he stood in front of the mirror curling huge weights up and down in each hand.  Two other men were on the weight machines, doing the slamming. Neither paid her any mind when she approached, too involved in their own conversation held between reps.

Like last time, Vegeta was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a sinfully tight tank top.

“Hey, what are the odds?” she chirped.

He eyed her for a moment and there was an imperceptible curl of his lip before he redirected his gaze back to the mirror.  Not surprising, but definitely irritating. Bulma sighed and took a step closer.

“So...remember how last week I said that I owed you?”

He maybe grunted a response but it also could have been because of the enormous weights he was throwing around.

“Could you stop for a second?” she asked, annoyed.

Bulma was used to the effect she had on people.  Her wealth combined with her looks was a potent combination.  She didn’t harbor anything for Vegeta other than irritation edging into outright exasperation but the fact that he was completely unresponsive was obnoxious.  Even in gym gear, she knew she was hot. And no response? That was just rude.

He dropped the weights onto the sound-absorbing mats that covered most of the gym and scowled at her.

“What?”

He didn’t wait for her reply, just turned to the weight bench behind him to get a towel out of his bag.

“I’m just saying I owe you.  Even if Fasha made you do it, you did me a favor so I want to pay you back.”

He lowered the towel from wiping his brow and scowled.  Part of her wanted to tell him that his face would stick that way, but she managed to refrain.

“How?”

Okay, she didn’t think she’d get that far.  Bulma rolled her lips in as she thought of a suitable payment.

“I will...buy you food.  At a restaurant.”

He furrowed his brow. “Are you asking me out?”

“What?” she screeched. “No!”

The two men on the machines looked over and she wiggled her fingers in a wave.  She turned back to Vegeta.

“No,” she repeated at a much more regular volume. “Just, like, lunch.  When are you free?”

He stared at her for a long while, his gaze dark and hypnotizing.  Bulma found herself wanting to look away from its intensity but not being able to.  Maybe his shitty personality was meant to balance out how striking his looks were, she thought.

“Thursday,” he said finally.

Shit.  She had plans with Chi-Chi that day.  Well, they were lunch plans anyway. She figured she would remember to text her friend and tell her they had another person with them.  Maybe it work out, anyway. It would  _ definitely _ not be a date if someone else was there.

“Perfect.” She grinned and then held her hand out. “Here.  Give me your phone.”

“Why?”

Bulma sighed.  Why couldn’t anything be easy with this guy?  She just wanted to pay him back and be done with it.

“To put my number in it.”

The “duh” went unsaid.  Again, as if he were humoring her, Vegeta went to his bag to grab his phone.  He unlocked it and handed it to her. Bulma tapped in her number and handed it back.

“Now text me so I have yours,” she instructed.

He glared at her but, a moment later, her phone vibrated in her bag.  Bulma extracted it and looked at the notification from a number she didn’t have listed in her contacts.  It read:  _ No. _

She swallowed a laugh and registered the number under his name.

“Cool, I’ll text you.”

He grunted and put his phone and towel back.

“Don’t worry,” she assured him. “It isn’t a date.  Chi-Chi will be there.”

Vegeta was already bent halfway over to pick his weights back up and he straightened his back to fix her with a perplexed look.

“Who’s Chi-Chi?”

\--

Chi-Chi held Gohan’s hand as she led him out of the library.  He had expressed interest in learning to read and she had let him pick out picture books after storytime.  She didn’t want to brag, but she was pretty proud of how far along Gohan was in his development compared to other four-year-olds.

“Can we go home and read?” he asked, excitement evident in his voice.

“Soon, baby.  We’re meeting Aunt Bulma for lunch, remember?”

He seemed a bit put out but Gohan never fell into bad moods for very long.  For that, Chi-Chi was grateful. He was the perfect little boy.

Even if she sometimes felt a pang of guilt looking at him.

It wasn’t towards him it--it was towards herself.  She hadn’t initially planned on freezing out Gohan’s dad.  When she discovered she was pregnant, she panicked. She was twenty and in school and--scared.  She had been experiencing this depth of feeling for the first time and to be pregnant on top of it freaked her out.

By the time she came to terms to it, she thought it was too late.  She shouldn’t have just cut off contact, but now that she had, coming back into his life six months pregnant would look...terrible.  That was how she ended up here. She didn’t regret Gohan for a second, but she regretted how it all turned out.

She still thought about him, but he would be undoubtedly mad at her and.  She had to remind herself that it was the past and to keep it there. All Chi-Chi could do now was focus on the present.  Right now her present included meeting Bulma for lunch.

The hostess at the front said “Oh, they’re waiting for you” and directed her into the restaurant itself.  The use of “they” surprised her. Unless Bulma told her anything about using different pronouns, that meant more than one person was there.  She hadn’t  _ said _ anything about an additional person joining them, but that was Bulma for you.  Chi-Chi figured it was Yamcha taking a break from his hectic wedding planning--the wedding wasn’t until December but by the way he acted, it might as well be tomorrow--to actually sit down and eat food.

She reached the table to see a man she didn’t recognize sitting next to Bulma.  His arms were crossed over his chest and he was scowling but that could just be his face.

“Um..who’s this?” she asked as they neared the table.

While she waited for her response, Chi-Chi lifted Gohan up into his chair.  He was too big for boosters but he still had trouble getting in “grown-up chairs” as he called them.

“Oh!” Bulma said as if she forgot the guy was here. “This is Vegeta.  He’s the guy who helped me when my car was in the shop so I’m paying him back with food.”

Gohan looked at him and said, quietly, “Prince Dickwad.”

Chi-Chi sent an icy glare at her friend, which Bulma fielded with a shrug, apparently not at all bothered by the fact that she was teaching Gohan curse words.  Vegeta, to his merit, merely switched his scowl to a slight smirk as if the moniker didn’t bother him. Chi-Chi took her seat and unfolded her napkin to place on her lap.

“I’m Chi-Chi,” she said. “This is my son, Gohan.”

“I’m four,” he informed him seriously.

“Okay,” Vegeta said back awkwardly as if he wasn’t sure what to do with this information.

He picked up the menu to look at it and Bulma nudged him on the arm.

“Order what you want,” she said. “Don’t try to be a dick and order the most expensive thing just because since I’ll tell you right now that money has zero meaning to me.”

“Must be nice,” he muttered and turned the menu over.  Under his breath, almost an afterthought, he added, “Telephone numbers.”

“What?” Bulma asked.

Chi-Chi didn’t know what that meant either.  Vegeta looked up as if surprised they had heard him.  Regaining his apparent usual scowl, he gestured at the menu.

“Telephone numbers,” he repeated. “The guy who raised me calls high prices at restaurants telephone numbers since that’s what they look like.”

“‘Guy who raised you’?” Bulma asked in her most droll voice. “You mean your dad?”

“He’s not my father,” he said quickly, angrily.

An awkward silence settled over the table and Chi-Chi shifted nervously on her chair.  She looked at Gohan who was watching them all. He rarely missed anything, her observant little boy.

“I don’t have a dad either,” he said.

Vegeta blinked once and then once more.

“Oh.  Okay.”

\--

When Goku was little, his grandpa would take him to a tower on Papaya Island.  He wasn’t actually his grandpa but, when he adopted him, he was already old so calling him “dad” didn’t make much sense.  The tower was called Korin’s Tower and it, like most things on the island, was a tourist attraction. He would go up to the top and stare at the city across the river.  Look at the bridge that connected it to the rest of the city like a child in the womb but, then, he didn’t know why he thought that. The man who owned it, Mr. Korin, always gave Goku a little bag of jellybeans when they would come and he would look at all of the tacky shirts that filled the racks.  He didn’t think they were tacky, then, just colorful and fun.

He thought he gave everyone jellybeans but later realized it was because he felt bad for him.  Because he was an orphan from Sadala. As a child, he didn’t understand. He remembered being on a plane but then being lost and calling for his mother.  Being found by the embassy, labeled an orphan, and adopted out. Like he was a cat or a dog and not a person. When his grandpa would say “people feel for you because of Sadala” and he never really understood it.

And then he was sixteen and grandpa died and, somehow, he found out that his family was alive.  He met his parents, his brother and--it was home again. A home he had lost because grandpa was dead and he had no one.

It had taken time, but he felt better.  He felt at home. As much as he loved grandpa, there was something that never felt quite right about living on Papaya Island and it wasn’t because he had to deal with tourists in the summer.  Here, in Saiyan Town, he felt like he belonged. Now anyway.

When he was still acclimating to living here, to having a family, he felt like he was apart from the rest of his culture.  He felt like an outsider and it wasn’t until he stopped a girl from toppling into the subway tracks because of her overly heavy school bag did he feel like he was part of something.  With someone.

In some ways, Vegeta was right and six months almost five years ago didn’t make much sense, but he wasn’t there for those six months.

But Goku was a romantic and part of him wanted to think that, somehow, they’d find each other again and he’d find out why she simply disappeared all those years ago.  Maybe they would get back together or maybe they wouldn’t, but at least he’d have closure.

“Don’t slice your fingers off.”

Goku snapped back to reality to his mother’s voice.  If he thought about it, he had spent half of his life with his biological family--four years before being separated and eight years now--and the other twelve with his grandpa.  He was literally equally on two sides and sometimes he really felt it.

“Sorry,” he said automatically.

He turned his attention back to the customer and flashed what he hoped was an effective smile at her.  The woman gave a giggle and seemed to forgive him spacing out. Goku finished wrapping her meat and brought it to the scale to weigh and cash her out.  As he did, he caught his mother looking at him. She did that sometimes as if she still couldn’t believe that he was back in their lives. He was only four and knew what he knew as a small child.  He could only imagine his family’s fear, making it over from Sadala only to be separated from their child.

It was a lot to deal with so he oftentimes didn’t.  When his mom looked at him with that look of mixed relief and disbelief, he usually changed the subject.

“Raditz has a boyfriend,” he said once the customer left.

His mother leaned against the back counter and laughed, the moment of reservation passed.

“I heard,” she replied. “He tell you anything about him?”

“Nope.  Not even a name.  You?”

She shook her head.

“He’s so secretive sometimes.  Think he thinks we judge him?”

Goku shrugged.  Getting on with his brother had taken the most effort.  His mother immediately burst into tears and embraced him and Goku, even in his sixteen-year-old awkwardness, had held her back.  His father was aloof and harder to crack, but he won him over in a short amount of time. His brother, though, already had grown accustomed to being an only child.  It wasn’t that Raditz was spoiled but he had his life and his friends and now had a brother who wanted to fit into it. Eventually he did and they were fine now but it took a few years for them to feel like brothers and not roommates.

“I dunno.”

He didn’t think so.  Raditz just wanted to keep his new boy to himself just like Goku had with Chi-Chi.

His mother took a step forward and reached out to cup his cheek.  After the brief touch, she dropped her hand and began fussing with the wrapped display items on the case of the deli.

“I just want both of my boys to be happy,” she said.

Goku nodded.  That  _ would _ be nice.

\--

The VIP lounge area above the club was still open enough to hear the music, but private enough that Bulma and her friends didn’t have to fend off grabbing hands or drunken revelers.  This way she could lean over the balcony with a bottle of champagne and dance to the music and then turn back to her friends and hold a conversation without yelling.

It was truly the best of both worlds.

Most of their old group was out tonight.  She had managed to talk Chi-Chi into leaving Gohan in the perfectly capable hands of his grandfather for the night and come out with them.  That in and of itself was a huge accomplishment.

She had convinced the twins to come and, if Lazuli was coming, then her husband was sure to follow.  She also managed to pry Yamcha away from wedding planning for a few hours. Bulma already knew his fiancé wasn’t going to come.  Even in their wild college days, Tien hated going to the club.

She made her way to their booth secreted against the wall on the upper level and settled in on the edge of the seat.  She crossed her legs and dramatically leaned over the table.

“What’d I miss?” she asked as if she had been gone for more than the five minutes she had spent at the railing.

Lazuli gestured to her brother who was staring down at his phone.

“Lapis is seeing someone and won’t tell anyone.  Even me. His only twin sister.” Lazuli said it flatly but Bulma detected the hurt in her voice.

She didn’t know the twins as well as she knew everyone else but she knew they had been models together in childhood and were close.  As in “we tell each other everything” close. Bulma had a sister but she was over ten years older than her and they had never had that kind of connection.  That Lapis was apparently keeping his new paramour from her  _ was _ actually kind of big news.

“I’m not seeing anyone,” he said, even as his thumbs kept typing on the screen of his phone.

“Bullshit,” Yamcha said with a laugh. “Then why do you keep staring down at your phone and smiling?”

Lapis looked up and blinked his uncannily alien blue eyes at him.

“I follow a lot of accounts for zoos that post cute animals,” he said blithely.

Bulma could sense the lie.  Yamcha seemed to as well because he reached over to pluck the phone from his hands.  Lapis lunged for it but Lazuli pushed him back.

“Text log!” Yamcha cried victoriously and turned the screen to Krillin who nodded in agreement to confirm his statement.

“Name?” Bulma asked, lifting a brow.

Chi-Chi sighed and stirred her straw in her drink.

“Why won’t we leave Lapis alone?  Who he’s dating is none of our business.”

Being a good friend, Bulma didn’t bring up or joke that Chi-Chi was speaking from experience.  No one knew who she had been dating and who wound up getting her pregnant.

“No name,” Yamcha reported. “Just emojis.  He was onto us. Like, how the hell are we supposed to know who ‘eggplant, steak, motorcycle’ is?”

Lapis took the moment to seize his phone back and glared at them.

“This is why I don’t tell all of you things.”

Lazuli looked like she was about to make a comment but held back.  Bulma lifted her brows in interest. A schism between the twins  _ would _ be interesting.  With Lazuli now in school for fashion design and Lapis working for the parks department, they didn’t spend nearly as much time together and maybe it was starting to wear on them.  Sure, she didn’t wish drama or strife in her friends’ lives but she was also jaded and bored.

“Sorry,” Yamcha said. “But since Lazuli and Krillin are married, me and Tien are getting married, Bulma’s never dating anyone and Chi-Chi creating her kid out of clay like the chick from  _ Wonder Woman, _ we’re kind of starved for something new.”

“Hey!” she and Chi-Chi said at once.

Sure, outside of a hookup here or there, Bulma hadn’t actually dated anyone since she and Yamcha said their final farewells to each other four years ago, but she was hardly hurting for attention.

“I went on a date just a few days ago!” she said defensively.

Yamcha cocked a brow. “You mean when you and Chi-Chi  _ and Gohan _ had lunch with that guy who helped you with your car shit?  That’s not a date.”

Oh, right, he knew about that.  Well, there went her lie. Not that she considered it a date but she wanted to twist the truth of an actual event rather than fabricate a new one.  It was rule one of lying, after all.

“Okay, fine.  Whatever.” She waved her hand to end the discussion. “How’s the wedding planning going?”

As she suspected, the plan worked and Yamcha immediately launched into a tale of woe of dealing with caterers and venues and how five months  _ seemed _ like a long time, but wasn’t, and talk of Bulma’s love life or lack thereof was off the table.

\--

Bulma walked up and down on the step machine almost methodically.  She was by herself in the gym, which wasn’t a surprise. She liked coming in at two in the morning, feeling invincible walking through the streets on her way here, mace ready and keys between her fingers like a budget Wolverine.

She didn’t see him approach until he was in front of her in his usual gym garb: that unfairly tight tank top and sweatpants.  Vegeta stared at her with those dark eyes, an unreadable expression on his face. Slowly, she came to a stop and flashed a grin.  Somehow, she wasn’t out of breath and was able to meet his gaze even from her elevated position.

“Hey,” she said. “Fancy seeing you on this side.  Got tired of throwing weights around?”

“Something like that.”

Bulma hopped down from the step machine and gestured to it.

“All yours.”

He shook his head and she wondered if he was waiting for her to wipe it down.  It wasn’t sweaty just as she wasn’t sweaty, but courtesy was courtesy she supposed.

“I’m not here for that.”

There was a throaty undertone to his voice she hadn’t heard before.  Bulma put her hands on her hips and cocked one higher than the other.

“Oh?” she asked. “Then what  _ are _ you here for?”

She wasn’t sure what she expected but it sure wasn’t him taking a step forward and mashing his mouth against hers.  Vegeta held her against him and she placed both hands on that broad chest of his. Felt his hands go into her hair and pull it out from her ponytail.  He ran his fingers through it and then the roamed lower, lower until one cupped her backside. Bulma didn’t know what spurred this on but as Yamcha had so crudely reminded her last night, it had been a while.  It had been a while and he was a fantastic kisser.

He had her against the wall, one hand still supporting her ass but the other coming around the front.  She tilted her face up to deepen the kiss. She hooked a leg over his hip and grinded her pelvis against his.  Felt his arousal against the inside of her thigh.

How had it come to this?  Two stilted conversations in his car?  Her teasing him at the gym? An awkward lunch?

His hand was inside her leggings, teasing her through the material of her underwear.  Bulma bucked into his touch and gasped against his mouth.

“What brought this on?” she asked and  _ now _ she was getting short of breath.

Vegeta didn’t answer, just slipped his finger into her fully and teased a moan out of her.  Bulma closed her eyes and leaned into his ministrations and they disappeared. Confused, she opened them and found herself staring at her ceiling.

She shot up in bed and rubbed at her eyes.  A dream? Of course. People didn’t just fuck in the gym in real life.  First of all, it was unsanitary. Second of all, she didn’t wholly  _ want _ to fuck Vegeta in a bed, let alone in a public place.  At least, she was sure of it before.

Bulma pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and sighed.  She was still tired, to be sure, and not thinking straight.  A dream was a dream and Yamcha’s words the other night about her not dating anyone were bothering more than she let on.  Add in the fact that Vegeta was the last person she interacted with outside of her immediate group and she was good to go.  Or not.

It was a dream, though, and that was all it would be.  Of that she was certain.


	4. Chapter 4

There was one thing that occupied Bulma’s mind over the next week and it was the fact that she  _ most certainly _ didn’t have a crush.  In the direct aftermath of her breakup with Yamcha, she had gone a bit wild and slept with basically whoever she wanted.  This behavior went on for the first two years afterwards and only more recently had she slowed down. Her body was just  _ used _ to sex and concentrating on herself and her increased duties at Capsule Corp led to her being  _ pent up. _

At least that was what she told herself.  It sounded logical enough in her head and she had a PhD so of  _ course  _ she was right.  She didn’t have feelings for this guy.  How could she? They barely knew each other and most of their interactions involved her listening to his shitty music and being borderline insulted by him.

What she needed, though, was a second opinion on all of it.  Chi-Chi would be no help. Her mysterious babydaddy aside, she didn’t have any sort of relationship history or experience.  Her father, who she had spent the bulk of the previous week with, was also out of the question. He tended to fluctuate wildly between still considering her his baby girl and heaping CC responsibilities on her.  There was really only one person she could talk to. One person she could trust with this information.

Of course, after she told him, Yamcha burst into laughter.

“You’re not being helpful,” she said, annoyed.

He recovered and shook his long hair out. “Sorry, B, just--you really  _ do _ need to get laid, huh?”

Bulma thumped him on the arm.  While she knew she and Yamcha were the poster children for being able to remain friends with your ex, he was also being  _ very annoying _ right now.  He already knew something was up when she volunteered to go with him to give her opinion on flowers for his wedding.  She, and everyone else, tended to steer clear of wedding planning. They were still looking for potential florists and he wanted to take her to this shop before he took his fiancé.

“I need to make sure no one here is going to piss Tien off,” he had explained to her.

That wasn’t hard.  Bulma had known Tien since college and he wasn’t demanding but he was a perfectionist.  Usually it was just towards himself, but she knew it was bleeding into wedding planning because he wanted to get it right.  Get it perfect. On one hand, she found it very romantic, but it was also very annoying and she wasn’t sure how she was going to handle the next five months.

“I don’t need to get laid,” she said with a scoff.

Or maybe she did.  Get it out of her system.  Let Vegeta just be “that guy who helped her” and leave his number to gather virtual dust in her phone until she got an upgrade and lost it.

“You’re always welcome to a threesome with us.”

Bulma stopped in front of the door to the florist and cocked a brow.  That sounded hard to believe.

“Seriously?”

“No, Tien is very gay.”

There it was.  She sighed. Yamcha was probably right.  Now she got to repay him for his bad advice by judging flower shop employees with him.  Which, she realized as she pushed open the door, the most exciting thing she had done all week.

Shit.

\--

In all honesty, it was no surprise that Bulma was as jaded as she was.  This was the fate “gifted” children called geniuses too young and left to squander their mid and late twenties.  Or something like that.

Whatever.

All she knew was that she was going to get over her boring week and that dumb dream by getting very, very drunk.  Or getting everyone drunk, if her declaration to buy the whole bar a round of drinks was any indication. She heard it belatedly after she said it but then shrugged.  It didn’t matter. She was here to get wasted, try not to throw up in her Uber, and collapse on her bed. A  _ good _ fucking night where she was too drunk to dream.

Bulma was out with the twins who were doing their thing and dancing on tables as they always have so maybe their argument about Lapis and his secret boyfriend had passed.  Or maybe he told her. Or Lazuli used her weird, twin ESP and just found out. Who fucking knew with those two?

She watched them for a minute, fending off attention from all those around them.  She could have been jealous but the twins were  _ hot. _  They used to be models and even she, gorgeous as she was, couldn’t compete.  Lazuli kept waving her wedding ring in men’s faces and Lapis was pushing away anyone who tried to grind on him.   _ That _ was surprising.  He had to be serious about Mr. Mystery Man if he wasn’t at least flirting.

_ Hmmm… _

Bulma shrugged.  Whatever. Let him live happily ever after like everyone else.  She and Chi-Chi could be miserable and alone together. It would be great.  She called over the bartender who was already pouring her another drink. She accepted it and drank it through the small, red straw.

She turned and tried not to lean against the bar.  Someone had spilled something earlier and it was still wet.  Bulma tossed her head because she knew, of her many attributes, her hair was the most noticeable.  As she shook her hair out, she thought she saw someone familiar. Stilling herself, she glanced down the bar to see someone exchanging cash for a drink in a thin, plastic cup.  Saw him turn and regard the music the DJ was spinning with a curled lip.

Out of her dreams and into her bar, apparently.

She shouldn’t go over there.  Let Vegeta have his life and let her have hers.  Forget about the dream and concentrate on her night out.  That would be the smart thing to do.

“Hey,” she said, speaking loudly due to both the music and the amount of alcohol she had had dulling her senses.

Vegeta made a funny sort of face at her and it took her a moment to realize he was smiling.  No--he was  _ grinning. _  He looked like the Cheshire Cat on bath salts and  _ no wonder _ he was always scowling.  This was downright horrifying.

“Don’t do that,” she said and playfully hit his arm.

“Do what?”

“Smile.  It’s weird.”

And why  _ was _ he smiling?  Was he happy to see her?  She perished the thought the second it came across her mind.

“I am?” he asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

He touched his mouth and then made a sound through his teeth just barely audible over the pounding bass.  What was up with how he was acting? Bulma cocked her head inquisitively to the side. Vegeta bypassed the straw and tipped the thin, plastic cup to his mouth with practiced ease.  Bingo--he was  _ at least _ as drunk as she was.

“You’re drunk,” she said with a giggle.

“So are you.”

Well, she had no argument.  Bulma took a step back and regarded him.  He was in a pair of distressed jeans and, of course, a damn Joy Division t-shirt.  Compared to her in her tight, metallic blue dress, he was too dressed down.

“Why are you here?” she asked. “Like.  Here-here.”

Again, Fasha’s words echoed dimly in her head.  He  _ liked _ coming here--and why?  Surely going clubbing was cheaper over the bridge and he wouldn’t have to worry about the subway.  And yet here he was. Still, seeing Vegeta in front of her as drunk as she was meant that it was easier to push that dumb dream out of her mind.

“Hey!” she exclaimed. “So.  So. You’re drunk. I’m drunk.  We should get more drunk.”

Vegeta stared at her for what felt like a full thirty seconds before answering.

“I used the last of my cash.  All I have is my metrocard.”

Bulma had a running tab, but that didn’t even enter her mind.  Instead, a far more brilliant plan popped into her mind.

“I have booze at my place.  Let’s go there.”

She didn’t remember him agreeing with her, just the two of them careening drunkenly in the street.  If Vegeta was normally surly, drunk him was a fucking delight. She sent a text to Lazuli to let her know she left and to tell Lapis, and sucked in the summer air.  Everything was hot and greasy, but she felt cushioned from it all.

They pressed tightly against one another in the taxi and she was aware of that cologne again.  The one from the auto shop. She breathed it in, taking in a good amount of fumes from however much he drank and exhaled.

“Your breath smells like vodka,” he said.

“Yours smells like rum.”

He stared at her for a moment and then said, “You got me there.”

Yes, drunk Vegeta was definitely more fun than regular Vegeta.  Whatever she had had to drink was hitting her hard and she could only wave at her doorman before all but shoving him into the elevator.  The ride up was similarly disorienting. Everything happened in snapshots like a movie montage.

“Why are you here so often?” she asked.

“I like to pretend I’m still something,” he said and then shut his mouth.

So even drunk Vegeta had his limits.  He stood, swaying on his feet, and glanced past her, somewhere over her shoulder.  She didn’t want to dwell on it or dreams or lack of whatever Yamcha said. Bulma grabbed a bottle of wine and they took turns sitting on the floor of her living room and drinking straight from it.  They were loaded, so very loaded, and that was why it was no surprise to her that they woke up in bed together.

\--

Vegeta groaned and shifted uncomfortably.  He hated falling asleep in his jeans. It always felt like hell.  He sat up and rubbed his eyes blearily, unsure of where he was. His head pounded lightly and his mouth was dry, but that was nothing new.  He rarely got hangovers, even now that he was on the other side of his twenties. The same couldn’t be said for the person next to him. Bulma let out a pathetic groan and pulled a pillow over her head.  Like him, she was still in her clothes from last night. Some time during their second bottle of wine, they had passed out asleep on the bed.

He turned and looked at Bulma next to him and tried to think of the last time he had actually woken up  _ with _ someone.  Usually his hookups, when they happened, were at the bar in the bathroom or something.  If they did make it back to his apartment, usually the person left shortly after. They certainly never stayed the night.

“Ggggh…”

Bulma lifted her head and pushed some tangled blue hair out of her eyes.  Her makeup from the night before was smeared on her face and he wondered how she could still look so damn lovely with mascara and eyeliner smudged around her eyes and lipstick smeared down to her chin.

“Are you not hungover?” she asked and then winced as if talking was making her head hurt.

“No,” he said. “Just thirsty.”

Vegeta sucked on his tongue a little and gagged at the taste.  He didn’t remember throwing up but his mouth certainly tasted like he had.

“Seriously?”

“I don’t normally get them--but I’m getting too fucking old to drink like that.”

Bulma sat up and reached down to tug her dress down her thighs.

“How old are you anyway?”

“Twenty-eight,” he replied, not sure what that had to do with anything.

“Ooh!  I’m turning twenty-eight in August.” Bulma paused to rub her temples and winced against the volume of her own voice.

“I turn twenty-nine in October.”

“Libra?”

“Scorpio.”

“I’m a Leo.”

He didn’t care, but also didn’t want to put the effort into saying that he didn’t.  What he  _ wanted _ was something to drink.

“Want some coffee?  I need caffeine and aspirin,” she said and rubbed her temples again.

Thank Christ.

“Sure.  Then I have to leave.”

Vegeta didn’t know why he told her.  Of  _ course _ he had to leave.  What were they going to do?  Spend the day together? Please.

“Right.”

She continued to tug her dress down over her thighs and backside as she walked towards the kitchen.  He looked for a moment and then withdrew his gaze. A vibration in his pocket drew his attention next and Vegeta grabbed his phone to see an incoming call.  He winced at the name, realizing what it meant for him to be calling him.

“I forgot I had work,” he said gruffly into the phone.

“Where the fuck are you?” Nappa demanded. “I tried calling you like twenty times.”

Did he?

“I just woke up.” He swallowed against his dry throat. “I’m in West Park.”

He heard Nappa sigh audibly on the other line.

“Of fucking course you are.” Another sigh. “Listen, Cabba can cover for you.”

Well, now he owed Cabba.

“Fine.  Okay.”

“Hey,” he said, a laugh catching on the end of his words. “Just be good.  You know you only have this job so you don’t have to do that shit anymore, right?”

Like he needed reminding.

“Yeah.  Whatever.  I’m leaving soon.”

“Alright.  Text me when you get home.”

He rolled his eyes but agreed.  Said good-bye and hung up. He was still in his shoes, too, since his drunk self was a fucking animal who didn’t take them off.  He got out of bed and trudged out of the bedroom. In the light of day and to his sober eyes, Bulma’s apartment was nice. Much nicer than the one he and Kakarrot shared.  It was spacious and had large windows to let in sun and allow a view of the park. Her furnishings as well were nice and that leather couch most definitely wasn’t free off the street.

He was out of his goddamn element.

Bulma was rich--maybe as rich as his family had been in Sadala.  She was rich and he had literally zero cash in his wallet. Fuck.  The two of them inhabited different worlds. Getting drunk with her was fine, helping her out was fine, but there was no way he belonged here.

He made his way to the kitchen where Bulma handed him a steaming mug.

“You look like you take it black,” she said with a laugh.

“I have to go after this,” he said back gruffly, not wanting to validate her assumption.

“You said that,” she said, “and it’s no prob.”

He tipped the mug to his lips, ready to take a sip.  Bulma eyed him mischievously over her own mug and then gave him a wink.

“It was really nice sleeping with you, by the way.”

He sputtered coffee all over her expensive, granite countertops.

\--

Goku shoved the last wrapped sandwich into the plastic bag and looked up just in time to see the door to the deli open.

“Hey, I’m about to head out, but my mom is--oh, hey, Geta!”

He dragged himself up to the counter and said, “I want food.”

Goku reached into the bag and pulled out one of the sandwiches.

“Here.  I made two sandwiches for Raditz, but he doesn’t have to know that.”

Vegeta accepted it with a hitch of his chin and unwrapped it.

“Where were you last night?  You didn’t come home.”

“Out.  Stayed out.”

Goku walked around the counter and eyed him skeptically.

“You weren’t--”

“No,” he said quickly, his normally potent glare diminished by the dollop of mayo on the tip of his nose.

He held his hands up in mock surrender and grabbed the plastic bag.

“I’m going by the garage to drop off lunch.  Y’wanna come with?”

He expected a scoff and refusal but instead he shrugged.

“Sure.”

The garage was only a few blocks away, but it seemed to take longer.  Goku was a talker and usually Vegeta at least humored him but he was far more focused on eating his sandwich.  More than that, he seemed preoccupied by something. Not like he’d tell him. He was probably the person Vegeta was closest to, but that didn’t actually amount to anything in the grand scheme of things.

He walked around back to get to the garage and stepped through one of the rolled up doors.

“Feeding time!” he called.

All conversation halted and the four workers present descended on him.  Goku took a step back and handed out the wrapped, labeled sandwiches to each person’s taste.

“Extra pickles,” he said, handing one to Broly. “And pickled onions.  Horseradish and roast beef for Cauli...every part of a pig for Raditz...pastrami for Turles.”

He watched everyone and felt--a part of it.  Even after eight years, he still had tendencies of feeling like a bit of an outsider, but here, right now, he felt like he was really part of the group.

“So how about it?” Caulifla asked, clearly continuing a conversation from earlier.

“No,” Broly said flatly.

Goku balled up the now empty plastic back and tossed it towards the trashcan.

“What?” he asked.

Raditz paused between bites of sandwich to roll his eyes. “Cauli wants to take his sister out.”

“We’re already friends,” she insisted. “C’mon!”

“No.” Broly pulled a piece of pickled onion out with his teeth and glared at her. “Absolutely not.”

Caulifla sighed and hopped up on a stool to eat her sandwich.

“This ‘overprotective brother’ act is bullshit,” she said. “Kale is an adult.  Let her date people.”

“I don’t care if she dates other girls.  I just don’t want her dating you.”

Vegeta snorted a laugh into his sandwich, the first thing he said since he arrived.  Caulifla gawped at him.

“Excuse me?”

“You did just say ‘what if we got hot parts?’ and Radi had to tell you that your mom would kill us,” Turles said with a snicker.

“You have a suspended license and a police record,” Broly finished.

Caulifla glanced at Vegeta and Goku understood the weight of the shared look.  He didn’t know the details but he knew that Vegeta was the reason she got off with nothing more than a mark on her record.

“Well, still...I like Kale, okay?”

Broly didn’t say anything, but he probably knew he couldn’t keep them apart, worry for his sister aside.  Goku cleared his throat.

“By the way, mom says that Raditz’s is free but the rest of you need to pay your tabs at the end of the week.”

Turles waved a hand. “Got it, Goku.”

Out of everyone, Vegeta was the only one who called him Kakarrot.  Everyone else just adjusted to Goku, but sometimes he liked hearing his original name over his adopted one.  As it was, he never knew whether to introduce himself as Goku Son or Kakarrot Anserina. Chi-Chi had called him both.  Goku when he made her laugh and Kakarrot when he annoyed her. She’d wrinkle her nose and wave her hand in front of her face and then be unable to stop giggling when he would do goofy things to make her smile at him instead.

He forced himself back to reality and nudged Vegeta’s arm.

“Let’s go,” he said. “My shift’s over if you wanna just head home.”

He shrugged and balled up his sandwich wrapper.  Threw it towards the trash but didn’t go to pick it up when it didn’t quite make it.

“We’re going!” he called.

“See ya,” Raditz said back.

Everyone else just waved, too busy eating to say anything else.

“You alright?” Goku asked once they were out of the garage. “Did you not get any sleep last night or something?”

Vegeta made a sound like he was going to speak and then cut himself off abruptly.

“No,” he said after a moment’s silence. “I actually slept alright.”

Goku was beginning to think that he was never going to understand him.

\--

Bulma told herself she had crossed the bridge solely to deliver her “thank you” present two weeks too late to Fasha.  She had done a lot for her and her car without even knowing her and it turned a shitty situation into a far better one.  Fasha had been reluctant to accept the gift card when she saw the amount, but Bulma convinced her that it was the least she could do.  Told her to get something for Cabba, too, since he had helped her as well. Vegeta, she had already paid back. After their night together (if it could be called that), she figured they were done.  Back to being casual acquaintances.

But it would be rude not to tell him that she was in his neck of the woods, which was her reasoning as to why she texted him.

**Vegeta:** _I don’t care_

She laughed.  Bulma wasn’t sure when she started finding his grumpiness endearing rather than irritating.  He was like a grouchy house cat and it was kind of cute. Kind of.

**You:** _yes you do_

She followed it with a winking emoji and figured that was that.  Until her phone vibrated again.

**Vegeta:** _Fine.  You want a drink?_

Bulma was so surprised that she just agreed.  Shortly after, he texted her an address and that was how she ended up in a dive bar two blocks from where her car broke down.

“I’m surprised you actually want to hang out,” she said when he came to the table with two pint glasses.

“I don’t,” he said, and then. “My roommate’s working and I was bored.”

Right.  He passed her the beer and Bulma gulped it down.  It was some kind of summer-themed shandy, the kind she used to drink like water in college.  A nice departure from their escapades the other night when they were both completely wasted. Good.  She still had to remember the train schedule to get home.

“Where do you work?”

He gestured vaguely towards the door.

“The bodega down on 97th.”

She wondered if it was the same one where Cabba pushed her car, but she didn’t ask.

“You live around here?” she asked.

“Of course I fucking do,” he said, clearly annoyed at her line of questioning.

He knocked back some of his beer and, if he was like her, it was probably doing very little for him.

“You’re so wound up,” she said, waving her hand and giggling.

Like finding his grouchiness endearing, she wasn’t sure when she enjoyed being around him rather than exasperated.  Maybe it was because he wasn’t forced into doing her a favor. Maybe it was because he didn’t vomit on her carpet or try anything when they were both incomprehensible.

_ Or maybe it’s that damn dream making you see him differently. _

Bulma swallowed more beer to drown out  _ that _ thought.

“Let’s see it, then,” she said.

“See what?” He cocked a brow.

“Your apartment.”

“What?  Why?”

Why indeed.  Bulma was feeling restless and the bar suddenly felt stuffy.  That was definitely why. Of course she knew the implication, but Vegeta didn’t know about the dream and he had shown no hint of even attraction towards her.  Not in his car, not at the gym, not at their not-date at lunch, and not even after their impromptu sleepover. Her dream was not going to come true.

\--

In the end, it was Bulma’s own fault.  They got to his apartment and she realized that the entire living room and kitchen was the size of her bedroom.  There were two bedrooms but one was more of a closet.

“We saw ‘two bedroom’ and got excited,” he said. “Luckily my roommate doesn’t have a ton of stuff.”

There was a slam above their heads and Bulma nearly jumped.

“That happens a lot,” Vegeta said in the way he said most everything. “They’re either always moving furniture or engaged in weird kink shit.  We don’t care enough to find out which it is.”

He went back to the kitchen and scrounged around inside the fridge.  He was probably looking for something else to drink. She paid for the round of beers at the bar and, he didn’t say anything, but she could tell he was grateful.  Bulma watched him look and definitely didn’t watch the way his jeans pull around his ass when was bent over.

“We’re out of beer,” he said after a moment and shut the door. “We can go back to the bar.”

They could.  That would make sense.  They could have another round of beers, and she could go down to the subway with her facilities in tact.  She could go home and text the group and let the night have a quiet resolution.

But Bulma had always been an impulsive person.  And, at the end of the day, she knew Yamcha was probably right.  She needed to get it out of her system.

“Hey.”

Vegeta folded his arms. “What?”

Bulma sighed.  She’d have to do this herself.  Was she going to do this? She closed the distance between them and--she was right, she realized.  Standing in front of him wearing sneakers, they were very nearly the same size. Hell, she was probably even a little taller.

“What are you doing?” His voice had hit that pitch that it had in her dream and it didn’t sound  _ quite _ identical but it was close.

What  _ was _ she doing?

She leaned in and his breath smelled like beer.  Or was that hers? Carefully, she pressed her lips against his tentatively.  If he pulled back, it was no loss. She could laugh it off and say she was messing with him.

“Why did you do that?” he asked.

_ Because I had a weird sex dream about you that I can’t get out of my head. _

Somehow she knew that that wouldn’t fly.  Well, she figured she’d take the thread and make a movie reference out of it.

“Because I knew you wouldn’t.”

If he got it, Vegeta made no indication.  They stood at an impasse for a moment, still uncomfortably close.  She was about to make the joke and write it off but he leaned forward and kissed her.  His mouth slotted into hers and she instinctively pressed against him. She heard him make little grunting noises between kisses and it was kind of cute.

Bulma opened her mouth to let him sink inside.  They stayed that way for what seemed like forever, standing in the kitchen and making out like teenagers, their hands frozen on each other’s waists as if they were glued there.

Finally, he pulled away.

“When is your train?” he asked.

_ That _ was what he was asking?

“Not sure,” she said, breathless. “I’ll have to check the app.”

“They go pretty late.”

“They do.”

_ Oh. _

“Early, too,” she added.

He squinted at her for a moment and then descended on her again, as if he suddenly realized that he had the perfect means to shut up her cheeky mouth.  Bulma tested the waters by lifting her leg and he seized her under the thigh to bring her closer. His hands slid back to her lower back and she took the opportunity to jump up and wrap her legs around his waist.  She crossed them behind his back and used her higher elevation to deepen the kiss.

“I move fast,” she said, breaking their contact for a moment.

“Sure,” he said. “Fine.”

This was an odd hookup, she thought.  He was reacting to her in a way that made it clear he was interested but his words still sounded grouchy or apathetic.

“You said you had the bigger bedroom.”

“Relatively speaking.”

Bulma cupped his face with her hands and said, “Show me it.”

Still carrying her, he walked out of the small kitchen and started towards one of the closed doors.  She kissed him all the while, and they all but stumbled into the room. She slid down his body once they got inside and pulled her shirt off before reaching for his.  They kissed again and she let him take her bra off, let him stroke the side swell of her breast. When she brought her hands to the waistband of his pants, he put both hands over it.

“Not yet,” he said throatily. “Bed first.”

They were under the covers when he finally her completely disrobe him.  She felt something hard against her thigh and--there was no way that was right.

“Shit!” she yelped.

Vegeta frowned. “What?”

“Your dick.  What the fuck?”

“What?” he repeated, annoyed.

“Why were you nervous about taking your pants off?  It’s big!”

Thick, too, she realized as she slipped her hand below the covers.

“That’s not why--shut up.  Do you want it or not?”

Bulma started laughing.  He really needed to work on his dirty talk.

“I do,” she said. “C’mere, Your Highness--right?  That’s what everyone calls you?”

He grunted but crawled over her.  She knew that she had to think about this.  In the grand scheme of things, she barely knew him but--over the past few years, how many of her hookups  _ had _ she known?  The two of them had at least interacted and, shit, had even slept in the same bed.

The sex itself was not what she expected.  After the first kiss, she thought he would be tentative so they could figure each other out.  No, it was like the waves on the beach, cresting higher and higher as the two of them were rocked in the bed.  She gripped his hips with her thighs and threw her head back on the pillow. It  _ had _ been too long.

She came in a shuddering moan, biting her lip against it but being unable to hold back.  Vegeta was similarly loud, breathing heavily and then letting out a loud cry that was very nearly a scream.  When he peeled himself off of her, she let him fuss with the condom while she used the bathroom. Bulma looked at her naked body in the toothpaste-spattered mirror as she washed her hands.  She splashed some water on her face and stared back at her reflection. Her lips were kiss swollen and her hair was a mess. Her makeup, though, was fine other than her smudged lipstick. She would have to remember that next time she was at the store.  Right. She was distracting herself.

Truthfully, the sex was fantastic.  It would be a shame to just let it lie as a one time thing to get it out of her system.  But she didn’t want a relationship. She could smell emotional constipation from a mile away and Vegeta reeked of it.  She wasn’t sure how to broach the concept of it just being a hookup thing, though. She had never had that sort of relationship.  She and Yamcha were always all in when they were together and her various hookups had only been one, maybe two night stands.

Her mind not quite made up, Bulma walked back into the bedroom to see that Vegeta had already put on a pair of pajama pants.  Oh. That was hardly intimate. Maybe this wouldn’t be difficult. She stepped into her discarded underwear from the floor and tugged her t-shirt on over her head.

“So,” she said as she hopped back on the bed.  She scratched her arm as uncharacteristic nervousness gripped her. “You don’t happen to have a cigarette, do you?”

She had been good about quitting but she felt strangely bashful having to have this talk.  A smoke would help.

“I quit,” he said.

“Me too.” Bulma sighed.  Now or never. “So this isn’t a relationship.”

Vegeta scoffed.

“No shit.”

_ Well, that was easy. _

She fluffed up her hair and took another deep breath.

“But I want to do this again.  What about you?”

He shrugged his shoulders and her words fled her mind as she took in his body.  Seeing him actually shirtless wasn’t much different from his gym tank tops but it  _ was _ suitably impressive.

“I wouldn’t be opposed,” he said and she had to tear her gaze away from his abs to laugh.

“‘Wouldn’t be opposed’?”

He shrugged again.  Bulma shook her head.  Right.

“Okay, so let’s have an agreement.  No strings. No relationship. Just good ‘ol fashioned boning.”

He curled his lip at her descriptor but nodded.  Bulma held her pinkie out and gave a cheeky smile.

“Pinkie promise?”

Another scoff through his teeth and a roll of the eyes.  He crossed his arms over his chest and looked away.

“C’mon.”

He rolled his eyes again but reached out to lock his pinkie with hers.


	5. Chapter 5

Bulma awoke to the smell of something cooking.  She sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. It took her a moment of not seeing the light filtering through the curtains of her bedroom to realize that it wasn’t her bedroom.  She was in Vegeta’s room and, as he had showed her yesterday, his apartment had all of one window in the kitchen. It looked out into what she _guessed_ was some kind of communal courtyard but it was nothing but crumbling concrete and cigarette butts from what she saw last night.  She stretched and rubbed her eyes. She was still in her clothes from yesterday and was in dire need of a shower but--the smell was far more intriguing.  She was alone in the bed, so it stood to reason that Vegeta was in the kitchen.

Was _he_ the one cooking?

Somehow, she found that hard to believe.  They had just agreed that they were going to have no strings, just sex, and him making her pancakes or whatever wasn’t exactly in line with that.  Maybe it was his attempt to be nice. Maybe.

Bulma stepped into her discarded shorts and walked out into the main room of the apartment.  She looked towards the kitchen and saw a complete stranger. He was tall and--well, he was hot.  Kind of loose-limbed even with how he was standing at the stove and his hair was all over the place but he was remarkably good-looking.  A bit more conventional looking and less striking than Vegeta, though. He turned his head as she approached the kitchen and burst into a wide grin.

“Hey, you’re awake!” he said brightly, waving a spatula. “I’m makin’ pancakes.”

There was no kitchen table but a bit of a counter with two stools so Bulma leaned against it.

“Oh?” she asked.

Did he do that often?  Make pancakes the next day for people his roommate slept with?  Whatever--if he did, it didn’t matter.

“Yep.” He turned back to the stove and flipped the pancake he had currently in the frying pan.

Bulma watched him for a moment until she figured introductions were in order.

“I’m--”

“Bulma Briefs.  I know. My brother follows you on Instagram.”

“Oh.  Well. Alright.  You’re Vegeta’s roommate?”

He nodded as he slid the pancake off of the frying pan to join a stack on a plate next to him.

“Yeah.” He glanced over his shoulder and said, “Yo!  I’m Goku.”

There was a slight hesitation between “I’m” and “Goku” and it made Bulma quirk her brow.

“You sure about that?”

He laughed again. “Most of the time.”

“Most of the time?”

He nodded, humming a bit as he poured more pancake batter from a chipped pitcher into the frying pan.

“I was adopted,” he said, “when I came over from Sadala.  And they changed my name. So I’m both Goku and Kakarrot.”

“Ah.”

Bulma couldn’t imagine what that was like.  For any of them. She was too young to remember the war as anything other than passing news coverage mingling in with everything.

“Do you do this often?” she asked to change the subject.  He was trying to be lighthearted but her keen senses picked up that Goku was uncomfortable talking about it. “Y’know, make pancakes for hookups.”

He shook his head and flipped another pancake. “Nope.  First time. Usually when Geta has hookups, they don’t spend the night or they don’t even make it to the apartment.  Y’know, we still can’t go to the ABP two blocks down ‘cause he had sex with one of the cashiers one night at the bar and it sucks ‘cause I like their avocado and egg sandwich thing.”

Bulma took in that weird, winding sentence with a nod.  He was an odd one--but he seemed sweet. She heard a door open and turned to see Vegeta come out of the bathroom.  His hair was wet, but he was already back in his sweatpants. They hung low on his hips, though, giving her a view of his hip bones and a hint to where those bones led.

_Oh, shit, I really slept with someone built like that, huh?_

With all due respect to her soon-to-be-married ex, Vegeta had the best body out of any of her sexual partners and, truthfully, she looked forward to licking her way up them again.

“I made pancakes,” Goku informed him. “The mix was half off.”

He slid the last one onto the plate and turned the burner off.  He left the frying pan where it was and brought the plate over to the counter.

“Lemme grab plates.”

He came back with them as well as a bottle of syrup fetched from the fridge and Bulma took a bite after drizzling some on.  The pancakes were amazing so she decided that she liked Goku. He was cute and seemed nice. If he was Vegeta’s roommate...an idea came to her.

“Are you single?” she blurted.

A surprised look crossed Goku’s face and Vegeta turned to look at her, mouth full of pancake.

“Uh...aren’t you two…?”

She shook her head. “No, not for me.  Never mind, never mind.”

It was probably a terrible idea anyway.  Probably.

\--

Time flew when you were having fun--at least that was how it seemed to Bulma.  Between shareholder meetings, discussing prototypes with her father, lunches with Chi-Chi, and going over the bridge for fuckfests with Vegeta, Bulma’s life was packed.  The weeks seemed to slip away from her and before she knew it, it was nearing the middle of July.

She sat on her bed, idly tapping away on her phone and licking the inside of her lips.  Despite her best efforts, they were chapped from constant and prolonged kissing. Honestly, her arrangement with Vegeta was going extremely well.  They both had healthy sexual appetites and didn’t bog one another down with “feelings” and “emotions.” It was just what she needed. Truly.

She scrolled through Twitter and Instagram, bored, because no one else’s lives seemed to be as packed as her.  Chi-Chi never went on any social media--not even to share some dopey, cute anecdote about Gohan like every other parent did.  Lazuli was busy with summer classes and Lapis posted pictures of various park and beach cleanups he oversaw, but most it seemed that he was preoccupied with his mystery man to post his usual fare of shirtless selfies.  Yamcha was balls deep in wedding planning hell. Shit. Bulma leaned back against her pillows and sighed. She finally had time to herself and no one was available.

Frustrated, she pulled the browser up on her phone and started to type in her own name just to see what people were saying.  She hadn’t been out recently to any of her usual bars and clubs and she wondered if any of those obnoxious gossip blogs she hated had anything to say about it.  She put her finger near the “B” on the keyboard and then changed her mind. Instead, she typed Vegeta’s name in, including his last name, which he had recently shared with her.  Giardino. It was kind of pretty.

The page loaded on her phone’s browser a moment later.  There was a link to someone’s Instagram with his name in the caption and below it an archived news article.

_Lone Prince Only Survivor of Royal Massacre_

Bulma clicked it, shaking her head at the sensational title, and saw it was an article from over twenty years ago.  There was a picture of Vegeta at five or six years old along with a brief description of the coup that left his parents and younger brother dead.  Bulma stared at the article for a moment before it hit her. “Your Highness,” wasn’t just a nickname because of his huffy, haughty attitude.

It was a real goddamn title.

He was an _actual Prince._

“I’m fucking royalty,” she said aloud, suddenly glad that she lived alone and had no one to hear her.

Sure, he wasn’t really a prince _anymore_ (his apartment showed that clearly enough), but that was.  Kind of wild. She went back to the main search results and scrolled down to see any more information, and something else caught her eye.  His name and then two words: arrest record.

Bulma clicked the link, wary about what she would find.  What came up was hard to view on her phone’s browser but she knew a mugshot when she saw it.  He looked younger--not as young as he did in the news article, of course--but it was definitely him.  She thumbed down to see if it had what he was arrested for. The first charge was “grand theft auto,” but that seemed to be the worst of it.  There were some additional charges but nothing horrific or egregious. He apparently wasn’t a murderer, at least.

Even so, she figured she had to bring it up in some way.  At least that she knew. Right? Bulma closed out of her phone’s browser and tossed the device onto her nightstand.  Whatever. It was to be addressed later--she wasn’t going to dwell on it.

\--

“You seem distracted.”

Vegeta said it in his regular, gruff manner, but the fact that his chin was resting on the skin below her belly button made her body vibrate slightly at his raspy tones.

“Do I?” Bulma asked.

She had come over at a text, but what she had read--both things she had read--had plagued her mind the entire way on the train.

“Are you pissed we only fuck at my place?” he asked brusquely.

God, he was still _such_ a charmer.  Even after all their time together, Bulma still was surprised by how social inept and grumpy he could be.

“No.  It makes sense.  Cheaper for you--money has no meaning to me, remember?”

“As if I could forget.”

He dipped his head between her legs and ghosted his breath at the V where they met.  Bulma squirmed a bit, but the wiggling little thoughts at the back of her mind wouldn’t cease.

“What?” Vegeta lifted his head up.

She sighed and pulled herself up into a seated position.  He got the message and came up next to her. They were barely touching--their shoulders only brushing--which was odd considering that they were both naked and contorted their bodies around each other at regular intervals.

“So.  I got bored and Googled you.”

His thick brows raised almost imperceptibly.

“And?” he prompted.

“Were you really the Saiyan Prince?”

Vegeta cringed and rolled onto his back.

“In another life,” he said finally, his dark gaze pointed on the ceiling. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“Doesn’t it?”

He shook his head.  When he spoke next, his tone betrayed nothing, but Bulma--keen observer that she was--noted a slight waver in his words.

“No.  Sadala isn’t my family’s anymore and it isn’t home.  I _was_ a Prince but it means fuck all now.”

That...was really sad.  Bulma thought about the bar they went to--his roommate and his friends she had met more than once at this point--and how everyone spoke the Saiyan language.  How they kept everything alive when there was nothing to go back to.

“So no reclaiming the throne?”

He made a sound that was maybe a laugh. “No.”

Bulma shifted on the sheets and stared at her bare legs splayed in front of her.

“That wasn’t all I saw,” she said.

“What?”

He sat up quickly and spared at glance to legs carefully encased in his pajama pants.  No matter what they got up to while they were naked under the covers, every time Bulma came back from going pee afterwards, he was back in sleepwear.

“Your, uh, arrest record.”

“Oh.” He frowned. “That’s on Google?”

“Yeah.  You’ve never looked yourself up?”

He fixed her with a look.  Oh, right. Mr. No Fun. Vegeta laced his fingers and placed them behind his head.

“You’re in bed with a criminal,” he said gruffly. “How about that?”

“Grand theft auto...what’s that about?”

“Don’t forget resisting arrest,” he said with a hint of bemusement.  Her expression must have changed because he shrugged. “I was nineteen.  It was a long time ago.”

He still seemed extremely casual about it.

“I mean, most people wouldn’t be so chill that their...y’know, fuckbuddy found their arrest record.”

“It was a long time ago,” he repeated. “A few of us, we used to boost cars and sell them for parts.”

“A few?”

He nodded.

“Me, Raditz who works at the garage.  Couple others.” He gestured out of the room. “Not Kakarrot.  He wasn’t there for that and, even if he was, I can’t see him hotwiring a car.  Can you?”

No.  She definitely could _not_ see his smiling, pancake-making roommate stealing a car.

“But you were caught,” she said.

He nodded. “Yeah.  I did my time. Sixteen months.”

Bulma let out a low whistle.  Over a year in jail. Even if it was a long time ago, that had to leave _some_ kind of scar on him.  Just like what happened to him in Sadala.  Was _this_ why he was so...grumpy?  Was it a defense mechanism?

“So you’re a felon?” she joked.

He made a “tch” sound through his teeth and rolled his eyes.

“It got filed as a misdemeanor, so no.”

Everything he said was in line with what she read and Bulma felt her shoulders lower.  She hadn’t even realized they had been up.

“And you’re okay?”

He shrugged.

“No.”

Well, that was succinct.  She had spent enough nights over here to see him take medication, but that didn’t have to do with this.  She got that. Hell, she had her meds, too. Especially if life liked to take constant shits on him, be it due to his own doing or an outside force.  On impulse, she leaned over and kissed him.

She expected him to snag her arm and deepen it--begin the dance they knew so well by now--but instead he just let her pull back.

“Do you want to watch a movie or something?” she blurted out.

Vegeta stared at her for a moment, his dark eyes unreadable.

“Sure.”

He went to get his laptop and set it between them.  Bulma squeezed closer to get a view of the screen as he pulled up Netflix.  Their shoulders touched and it almost looked like they were cuddling, but neither of them said anything about it.

\--

Maybe it was his weird little confessional but something had changed between them after that night.  They were _hanging out_ more than just brief stops at a bar before going back to his place.  They would watch movies and make fun of the ones they didn’t like. If Bulma didn’t know better, it was almost as if they were dating.  They never held hands or labeled it, but it was more than just sex.

She was certain it wasn’t that deep.  Vegeta was the same way. This was a natural side effect from how much sex they were having.  Nothing more.

Even so, when he invited her to the boardwalk one evening, she came.  She looked at the text he had sent her earlier and couldn’t help but laugh.

 **Vegeta:** _It’s not a fucking date.  I’ll bring Kakarrot. You bring the one who had the kid who said he didn’t have a dad_

It was remarkable that he could remember what Gohan said, but not remember his or Chi-Chi’s names.  Still, it was nice to have a buffer and she and Chi-Chi hadn’t gotten to hang out as often lately. Gohan, meanwhile, was beside himself in excitement.  The usually reserved four-year-old was all but bouncing on the boardwalk planks.

“The ocean!” he said excitedly. “Mama!  It’s right there!”

Chi-Chi smiled and reached down to ruffle his hair fondly.

“I see it, baby.”

He looked up, his dark eyes wide with enchantment at the lights and sounds of the boardwalk.  The smell of fried food mingled with saltwater and the sea breeze mitigated the humidity and heat.  It was a welcome respite from the humidity on her side of the bridge. Bulma couldn’t remember the last time she had been to a boardwalk.  The one in Saiyan Town wasn’t as impressive that those a little further south, but it wasn’t terrible. She thought back to her first impression well over a month ago when her car broke down.  It really wasn’t as bad as her frustrated self had seen it back then.

“So,” she said, turning to Chi-Chi. “Vegeta’s bringing his roommate along.”

She held up a hand to stop her.

“Absolutely not.  I’m not interested in dating anyone, let alone your...eff-buddy’s roommate.”

Bulma couldn’t help but laugh at how she censored herself.  She was never certain if Chi-Chi avoided swearing for Gohan’s sake or because she just hated doing it.

“Fine, fine.  Let’s go find my ‘eff-buddy,’ by the way.”

Bulma cracked up again at her friend’s avoidance of the word “fuck” and started to walk down the boardwalk.  Chi-Chi sighed and put her hand out.

“Come on, Gohan.”

There was no answer.  Bulma turned, surprised, and saw that there was no one standing next to Chi-Chi.  The other woman had clearly already realized it and was frantically looking around.  The boardwalk was fairly crowded at this hour--the sun just starting to dip below the horizon--and Bulma saw no sign of Gohan anywhere.

“Gohan!”

“Gohan!” Bulma joined in.

No answer.

“Where could he have gone?” Chi-Chi was suddenly gripping her shoulder, her eyes wide with worry. “He’s so little.  We should still be able to see him!”

Bulma looked between people’s legs, trying to spot him, but it was no use.  Any thought of her not-date left her head as it was quickly replaced by worry.

Where _was_ he?

\--

Vegeta stood at the exit to the Vomatron, periodically checking his phone.  He and Bulma didn’t have a planned meeting time or place. That would make things feel far too much like a date.  Instead he waited for her text to let her know she and her friend had arrived and he would wander over to where they were and go from there.  Kakarrot, of course, had gone to feed his face because he couldn’t go more than a few hours without eating.

He felt something tug on the leg of his jeans and heard a quiet voice say, “Um…”

With a start, he looked down to see a small kid--no.  Not just a small kid. He was Bulma’s friend’s kid. The one from lunch.

“You’re Aunt Bulma’s friend,” he said in a quiet, scared voice.

Well, that was one way of putting it.

“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “Uh.  Where’s your mom?”

The kid’s eyes went wide and filled with tears.

“I don’t know,” he said in a watery voice. “I saw the lights and started walking ‘cause I thought mama was behind me and then she was gone and I couldn’t find her and--and.  I got scared.”

_Oh, fuck me._

He didn’t do well with kids.  He had no idea how to talk to them.  Well, at least he could text Bulma and let her know he was here.  Two birds, one stone. He crouched down and pulled up his phone’s camera.

“Here, kid--”

“Gohan.”

“Gohan,” he repeated. “Sure.  Smile.”

He took a selfie and sent it to Bulma with an accompanying text.

 **You:** _He came up and said he was lost.  By the Vomatron_

The response was almost immediate.

 **Bulma:** _thank god!!!!  wait. is it really called the vomatron?_

It didn’t take long for Bulma and her friend to reach him.  Immediately the dark-haired woman scooped Gohan up into her arms and cuddled him against her chest.

“Baby, you scared me so much!” she exclaimed, rocking her body back and forth.

“Sorry, mama.”

Gohan rested his head on her shoulder.  It was a very touching reunion and Vegeta turned from the reunited mother and son to Bulma.

“What?”

“My hero,” she said with mock adoration.  She fluttered her eyelashes and leaned in towards him.

He rolled his eyes and resisted the urge to push her away.

“Where’s your roommate?” she asked.

“Coming along,” he replied. “He had to eat.”

Bulma nodded and he let his eyes dart below her face.  She was wearing a mustard yellow crop top and incredibly short shorts.  He imagined that each item cost more than nearly everything in his closet.

“Geta!”

He dragged himself from his thoughts at the sound of Kakarrot’s voice.  He looked up to see his roommate waving at him as if the boardwalk was infinitely more crowded than it was and he had to flag him down.

“Get this,” he said as he approached. “Raditz is here with his boyfriend.  I caught them playing Whack-a-Mole together.”

Bulma laughed and turned to hug him hello.

“So that’s what they call it these days.”

Kakarrot hugged her back and pulled back.  He looked at the new members of their group and the smile ran away from his face.

Bulma gestured to her and said, “This is my friend--”

“Chi-Chi?!” Kakarrot blurted out.

Right, that was her name.  She looked up from hugging her son and met his eyes.  A surprised look crossed her face. She seemed frozen in place, unable to react at first.  Then she shakily reached up and pushed some hair back with her free hand.

“Goku?”

Vegeta cocked a brow and shared a look with Bulma, who shrugged.  She was equally clueless, then.

“Hey,” he said and walked over to her. “It’s been a while, huh?”

She nodded.

“Yeah.  It has…”

Gohan looked back and forth between them, his eyes wide with confusion.  Kakarrot spotted him and that smile sprang back to his features.

“Hey, little dude.  I’m Goku. What’s your name?”

Sometimes he was jealous at how easily Kakarrot related to people, but mostly he was just annoyed by it.  He was clearly focusing on talking to the kid to avoid...whatever there was between him and Chi-Chi.

“Gohan,” he said back in a quiet, small voice.

“How old are ya?”

He held up four fingers and smiled shyly.

“Four?” Kakarrot’s eyes went wide. “Wow, you’re almost a whole handful!”

Gohan let out a little giggle.  Chi-Chi watched the exchange, biting her lip as she did.

“He’s my son,” she explained.  Took in a deep breath and added, “And yours.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know a few people asked me not to keep them waiting on this chapter and this fic is me attempting to keep to a schedule so it updates every thursday :D i'm also trying to keep at least a chapter ahead so i can keep that schedule on time because i'm. really bad at procrastinating. anyway, thank you to the response i've gotten so far for this fic and here's the fallout of what happened at the end of last chapter!!

It went without saying that Chi-Chi and Goku had a lot to talk about.  Bulma decided to give them that time by grabbing Vegeta by the wrist and hauling him down for a walk on the beach.  At this hour, most people were up on the boardwalk. Every now and then there were clumps of people crowded on towels or packing up their things, but mostly it was just the two of them.  

The setting sun made the water look golden orange.  The sand was cool enough that she could take her sandals off and hold them in one hand.  Vegeta, of course, kept his shoes on.

“Only you would wear jeans to the beach,” she said, because it was easier than addressing the elephant on the boardwalk.

He shrugged.

“What’s up with that?” she continued, “I get up to go pee after sex and you’re already back in pants.”

He curled his lip and looked out towards the ocean.  The setting sun and the shadows it created was doing amazing things to the planes of his face.

“Why do you go pee after every time we have sex?”

“To avoid UTI’s, duh.  You don’t have a vagina, so you don’t know.”

“Oh.  Alright.”

He folded his arms and came to a stop looking out at the ocean.  Bulma stood with him. It made sense not to go too far, after all.  The tide was going out and so they could stand pretty close to the shore.  The sand was packed hard and wet under her bare feet.

“So what’s with the pants?”

He looked at her for the briefest moment before looking back out at the waves.

“Not now,” he said.

There was an actual reason?  Bulma arched her brows in surprise.  She had just been messing with him. Truthfully, a lot about Vegeta was a mystery to her.  She cleared her throat and waved a hand back towards the boardwalk.

“So...Goku and Chi-Chi, huh?” she said, “We always wondered who Gohan’s dad was, but she never said anything.”

“He hasn’t shut up about her for five years.”

Something about that didn’t seem right.

“Wait, but when we had lunch, didn’t you recognize her?”

He seemed like he was about to laugh but it caught in his throat.  Instead he made a strange, elephantine sound through his nose that made Bulma crack up.

“What was that?” she asked, shrieking with laughter.

“Sh--shut up!” he barked.  After she calmed down, he added, “He never said her name.”

“Ah.”

Without prompt, they both began walking back in the direction they came.  Bulma realized that the hand holding her sandals was close to his and, if she switched hands, she could lace her fingers with his.

Where did _that_ thought come from?

“So what are we?” she asked and then mentally cursed at herself.  Why couldn’t her mouth let her brain know _once_ when she was about to say something?

Vegeta looked at her, all chiaroscuro and angles, and then it was all ruined because he made a face.

“We’re walking.”

She knocked him with her sandals.

“No.  I mean what _are_ we?”

Another face.  Bulma sighed. Reeled in her thoughts.

“Don’t get it twisted,” she said, “I’m not getting all sappy or having _feelings_ or any boring shit...it’s just.  Saying ‘FWB’ or ‘friend with benefits’ is really clunky and annoying.  And I can’t say ‘fuckbuddy’ in polite company. So what are we?”

There.  That was clearly what she meant.

“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug.

They were nearing the boardwalk again and the cacophony of sounds that had been dulled on the beach were now much louder.  Bulma stopped short of the weathered, wooden steps that would lead them back up and put her free hand on his bicep.

“How about this?” she asked. “We’ll be...not-boyfriend and not-girlfriend.”

“That’s asinine.” He frowned and said, “but apt.  Fine.”

She smiled.  Good.

“Cool.  So now you should totally buy your not-girlfriend a funnel cake.”

“Absolutely not.”

\--

Chi-Chi realized, with a dark laugh, that from the outside they looked like a young family.  She was holding Gohan and walking next to Goku, who wouldn’t look at her.

“Um--”

“We shouldn’t talk about this with Gohan here,” he said quickly.  He looked at their son and his gaze softened.

Gohan looked at him and he smiled.  It was a real, genuine smile that made him look even more handsome than usual.  The guilt came back, multiplied tenfold. She wanted to punch her past self for being too chicken to tell him.  Wanted to hurt her present self, too, for sticking to it.

“Daddy,” Gohan said like he was still testing out the word.  He smiled as he said it, content, and seemingly unaware of the tension between his parents.

Even as observant as he was, Gohan was only four, and far more preoccupied and excited with the prospect of having a father.

“Um.  I guess I can find Bulma…”

“No, I know someone who can keep an eye on him.”

He pointed towards the midway.  It was louder here and brighter--swirling lights and music--and the smell of fried foods and salt hung on even here.  Goku walked towards a bay of Whack-a-Mole games. There was a guy standing there, spinning the cushioned mallet in one hand and grinning victoriously.  His hair was pulled back but hung low, nearly to his waist, and he was massively tall and broad. Somehow, though, he managed to look small next to the downright enormous stuffed bear the person next to him was holding.

“Hey, Radi,” Goku said. “I don’t have time to explain, but can you watch my kid while me and Chi-Chi talk?”

He stopped spinning the mallet and nearly dropped it.

“Your _what?”_

The stuffed bear said, “Chi-Chi?”

She blinked, so out of it that she thought a stuffed animal was talking, until the person holding it popped their head around the bear’s middle.  She immediately recognized the familiar sharp, blue eyes and long, silky black hair framing an unfairly gorgeous face.

“Lapis?!” For a brief, merciful second, her anxiety and awkwardness about Goku faded away.

“Oh, hey,” he said in his usual bored-sounding voice as if this was normal.

“Wait--this is RB?”

Chi-Chi looked at Goku for an explanation.

“Raditz,” he said, eyes pleading. “Don’t.  Can you just watch Gohan while we talk?”

“Huh,” Lapis said, clearly amused by it all. “Chi-Chi’s secret babydaddy is my boyfriend’s brother.  Small world.”

“Yes, it’s all hilarious!” she barked, annoyed. “Can you _please_ just watch him?”

She was wary about leaving Gohan with strangers, but this guy was apparently Goku’s brother and--Lapis wasn’t a stranger by any stretch.  Raditz placed the mallet back on the machine and she took the opportunity to hand Gohan over.

“This is your uncle,” she said.

 _Apparently,_ she thought.

“Raditz,” Goku added.

Gohan looked at him seriously and then looked over to who was behind the bear.

“Hi, Uncle Lapis.”

“Hello, brat,” he said, but he was smiling. “Do you want to play some games?  I’m about to school your uncle at the shooting gallery.”

“He is,” Raditz agreed.  He seemed to be taking this in stride, which was good.  She didn’t need anyone to make it any _more_ awkward.

“Okay,” Gohan said.

“Mommy and, uh, daddy will be right back,” she assured him.

The trio (or quartet if you included the bear) left and now they had no one to face except each other.

“What’s RB stand for?” she asked.

Goku jerked his head away and mumbled something under his breath.

“What?”

“Rich bitch,” he said more clearly.  Quickly, he added, “It wasn’t my nickname for you.  My friends called you that since I never, uh, told them your name.”

She could hardly blame him for that considering all that she hadn’t told him.

“Should we go talk on the ferris wheel?” he asked with clearly forced joviality.  Chi-Chi _knew_ his smile and this wasn’t it.

Embarrassment and irritation flared as one, making her cheeks warm.

“No.”

The memory of what had happened _last_ time they had been in one of those enclosed gondolas together was still fresh in her mind.

Without agreeing on it, they began walking down the boardwalk.  It was loud and crowded and somewhere, away from the midway, someone was playing top 40 songs on a speaker, but it all felt very far away.  She had thought about what she would say to Goku so many times, but now she was faced with the reality of what she had done and her mind was a blank.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know that doesn’t at all make up for this or help at all but.  I am.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets.

“I just...don’t understand why,” he said. “We were...things were getting good and then you were just gone.  And now I see you and you had my _kid_ and you never told me.”

“I know.  I panicked,” she admitted. “I wasn’t even twenty yet and I had school and I freaked out.  I cut out nearly everyone and then it was too late and the later it got, the worse it got to tell you so I just didn’t.”

Goku stared straight forward, still not looking at her, and she couldn’t blame him.

“I tried looking you up,” he said. “I texted you.  There was no answer.”

She remembered, in the first feelings of nausea and hell in her second month of pregnancy, she had gotten a text on her birthday from him.  She couldn’t deal then and then she convinced herself she couldn’t deal at any other point either.

“It doesn’t help that you barely even have social media.”

“I’m sorry I’m a sixty-year-old woman who only pins Pinterest recipes.”

She had hoped for a moment levity but he didn’t laugh.  She glanced from him back down to her feet. She really screwed this up and she had no idea how to fix it.

Or even what she wanted to fix.

Did she want to be with him again?  She had been surprised when she’d seen him again, looking even better than he had back then.  Open-faced and handsome with that messy hair. That amazing body. The sweet smile that fled his face the second he saw her.

“Goku--”

“Chi--” he started at the same time.

She licked her lips and said, “You go.”

He eyed her for a second and then nodded.

“I’m a forgiving person,” he said, “But.  This might take a while.”

Putting it lightly.  That was better than she hoped for.  Better than she deserved.

“And,” he continued.

They stopped by a cotton candy cart, the sickly sweet smell making her stomach turn.

“And?”

“I want to see Gohan more.  I want to get to know him. Make up for lost time and all that.”

“Of course,” she said quickly. “I.  Never purposely held him back. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t want you to see him.  I. I was a mess. I still sort of am.”

“I believe you.”

He wasn’t being sarcastic and, for that, she was grateful.  Goku held out his hand as if to shake on it and Chi-Chi laughed softly as she took it.  Touching him after so long made her hand tingle in a way that she couldn’t explain. She pulled back quickly and turned her head so he couldn’t see her face flame.

She wasn’t sure what that meant.

\--

Goku thought he was pretty good with kids.  Back on Papaya Island, he used to lead beach tours and teach kids about shells and tidepools.  Everyone reacted well to him, and he was glad because it meant that their parents would come back and pay again for the experience.  Even when he came to Saiyan Town, he could talk to kids in the bodega or when he saw them playing outside on the street. But it was different when it was _his_ kid.  His kid he didn’t know about.

His kid who was already four.

Gohan looked a lot like Chi-Chi, he thought.  He saw some of his own features but he was almost all her.  Wasn’t that a genetic thing? Firstborn sons resembling their moms?  He knew Raditz, despite the difference in height and bulk, looked a lot like their mom.  He, as everyone always said, was a carbon copy of his father.

“You live here?” Gohan asked.

“Um.  Yeah.”

His eyes went wide. “This close to the ocean?  That’s so cool!”

Chi-Chi had brought him over on the train, but left them to be by themselves.  Goku was glad. He didn’t think he could handle her being there. It was weird enough seeing her on the beach looking even prettier than he remembered in a pair of high-waisted shorts and a sleeveless button-up that looked like it had polka dots on it but, on closer observation, were little raspberries.  The way she stood there, holding her son. His son. Their son. He had thought he was her nephew or step-brother or something. How naive he was.

“I don’t live on the ocean,” he said with a laugh. “Too expensive.  I live a few blocks down. In an apartment with Vegeta. You met him, right?”

Gohan nodded sagely. “Prince Dickwad.”

He nearly choked, wondering where Gohan heard that.  He couldn’t imagine Chi-Chi calling someone that. Then again, it had been nearly five years.  That was a long time. She could have changed. _He_ had, hadn’t he?

He started to walk, expecting Gohan to walk with him but instead he held his hand out.  Oh, right. Goku took his hand and they began walking together.

“If I’m walking by myself, we have to hold hands,” he informed him seriously. “It’s the rules.”

“Got it.”

Gohan, he was beginning to realize, wasn’t like the four-year-olds he saw in the deli when he was at work or at the bodega while he was stopping in to get an Arizona iced tea.  He was quiet except when something excited him, like the ocean, and he took whatever rules Chi-Chi instilled in him very seriously. She had raised him well.

He figured she would.  He just wished he could have helped.  If he could have made a difference. His feelings for Chi-Chi were confusing.  He was mad and betrayed, but there was also a part that couldn’t deny that he still had feelings for her.

“This is Saiyan Town,” he said and Gohan nodded.

“Did you live in Sadala?”

“Until I was four.”

When he was a baby, the coup happened, but his family didn’t have money to leave until three years later.

“Did you ever see the bird that can only live there?”

 _That_ was what he was asking?  Goku laughed.

“Not that I remember.”

Gohan hung his head a little. “Aw.”

He walked him towards his mother’s deli, figuring that introductions were in order.  Gohan had apparently made a very good impression on his uncle when he watched him the other evening.  He and Chi-Chi had come back from their awkward conversation to see Raditz holding Gohan so he could smack the mallet down to test his strength.  His mom knew he had Gohan for the day and would be waiting for him at the deli. He didn’t expect his dad to be there, too, but when he walked in, there he was, leaning against the curved glass case in front of the counter.

“Uh, hi?” He frowned. “Don’t you have work?”

“They owe me at least one goddamn day off,” his dad replied. “And I wanted to meet my grandson.”

Gohan perked up at being addressed, but then seemed to remember that he was around new people and waved shyly. “Hi.  I’m Gohan.”

His mom came around the deli counter, plastic gloves off, and crouched down to hug him.

“Hello,” she said in the same tone of voice she used when she was in awe that Goku was back in their lives. “I’m your grandma.”

Gohan’s eyes lit up. “A grandma?  I’ve never had one of those before!”

Right--Chi-Chi’s mom had died when she was a baby.  She had told him that when they were together, sprawled out on his bed and--no.  He had to push that out of his mind. That was the past and this was. Shit. He was so confused.

“I have a grandpa on mama’s side,” Gohan said, “but he’s a lot bigger...and older.  You look like daddy.”

His dad laughed and reached out a hand to ruffle Gohan’s hair.

“We get that a lot, kid.”

“Gohan,” he said. “Not ‘kid.’”

Goku watched his father’s eyebrows go up.

“Noted.  Gohan.”

Gohan smiled and ran back to him.  Goku knew that he wasn’t going to get tired of seeing that smile.  His mom gave them sandwiches to take and Goku figured that they’d eat them on the beach, since Gohan was so excited to go back there.  As they walked, he saw that Gohan was counting on his hand that wasn’t held in his.

“What’s up?”

“I’m getting a lot of new family members today,” he said. “I got a daddy, and an uncle, a grandma, and another grandpa.”

He smiled as he said it, clearly pleased.

“I understand that,” he said.

Gohan turned those big eyes to him. “You do?”

“Yeah.” He exhaled. “When I was your age, I got separated from my family and got adopted by someone else.  And it was just us. Then, when I was older, I came back and met my whole family.”

He figured that was enough of an abridged story from his past.  He didn’t want to burden a four-year-old with all of that.

They stopped in the bodega for drinks to have along with their sandwiches and he could tell, from Gohan’s amazed expression, that he had never been in one before.  Right. Chi-Chi was rich. They probably had a grocery delivery service and--did they even _have_ bodegas in West Park?  Kakarrot couldn’t picture a neighborhood without one but rich people were weird.

“I thought Geta was supposed to work today,” he said, bringing a tall can of iced tea for himself and a bottle of orange juice for Gohan up to the counter.

“He already did,” Cabba reported. “I didn’t have class today so I agreed to work the mid ‘til Uncle Nappa comes in for the evening.”

“Ah.” He pointed down to Gohan. “This is my son.”

“I heard.” Cabba leaned over the counter. “Hey.  I’m Cabba.”

Gohan waved, shy again, and pressed his face into Goku’s leg.  It was amazing at how comfortable he was with him already. He was glad, but he thought things would be more awkward.  Maybe it was his age. If he were older, he might have been more suspicious, but Gohan just seemed happy to have him around.

The afternoon ended too quickly, but he was grateful that the ride on the train wasn’t short.  It was a little more time he would get to spend with him. The train wasn’t crowded so Gohan was able to stretch out next to him and look at all the shells he had collected on the beach.

“Here,” he said and held one up.

It was an abalone shell, and completely perfect in its form with no cracks or holes.

“For me?” he asked.

Gohan nodded. “It’s the best one I got today.”

Goku smiled as he took it. “Thanks.”

He closed his fist around it, feeling the grit of sand against his palm.  The robotic voice announced their station and he and Gohan disembarked. Chi-Chi’s apartment building was so much nicer than his.  She had a doorman who recognized Gohan and gave him a high-five as they walked in.

“Miss Mau put your name on a list,” he said. “Well, she put two names.  Are you Kakarrot Anserina or Goku Son?”

“Yes,” he said, much to the man’s confusion.

“Daddy has two names?” Gohan asked as they walked towards the elevator.

“Yep.”

His eyes went wide again and he hoped that he would continue to get him to make that face of impressed wonderment.

Chi-Chi answered the door when he knocked, already having been made aware of their arrival.

“Hi,” she said in a stilted, awkward way.

“Hey,” he said.

“Look, mama!  Shells!”

Gohan held his hands out and then pointed to his bulging pockets.  She angled a smile down at him.

“I see, baby.”

She looked back up at him and smiled again.  He smiled back because it was apparently happy smiling time until they worked out the weirdness and gulf between them.

“You had a good day?” she asked.

Gohan nodded, but Goku answered.

“Yeah.  Great. Introduced Gohan to everyone.”

“Good.  I’m glad.  I.”

She stopped herself and bit her lip.  He felt... _something_ between them, more than just the awkwardness, but he ignored it.  He had to. Chi-Chi seemed to have the same idea. She cleared her throat too loudly.

“Um.  Let me know when you’re free next and we can have you pick him up again.”

“Yeah, totally.”

He hugged Gohan good-bye and waved to her.  The door shut and he started to walk down the hall with its thick, colorful carpet.  He got back in the elevator and stared down at the shell that Gohan gave him. It was bumpy on one side and beautiful and iridescent on the other.  Two sides. He closed his fingers around it as the elevator swept him down.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, while i have started the next chapter, it might be delayed (and the next might be as well). i have a convention coming up at the end of next week and have to go up and visit family the week after and, super last notice, i also have to go up this weekend because my grandfather passed away last night so there's. a whole lot going on and writing isn't coming as easily as i'd like with the stress and. everything. thank you all for your continued reading and support of this fic, as always!

Chi-Chi couldn’t sleep.  She wasn’t surprised about this, simply resigned to it.  She tossed and turned for what felt like hours but, as her phone helpfully informed her, had only been forty-five minutes.  Finally, she threw her covers off and flicked her overhead light on.

She knew why sleep escaped her.

Her guilt, her actions, everything caught up with her and she wasn’t sure how to deal with it.  She had never prepared herself for what was quite honestly an eventuality. Chi-Chi always planned everything in her life, but she had pushed this down and pushed it away and now here she was.

She couldn’t get Goku’s face out of her mind.   _ That _ wasn’t odd either considering that she still dreamed about him.  Could still remember the way he felt, the way he kissed, the way he smelled.  But tonight it wasn’t nostalgia that helped her stroke herself to sleep on fitful nights--it was the look on his face when she told him who Gohan was.  The shock and hurt.

Chi-Chi crossed to her desk and opened one of the drawers.  It was a shallow drawer and the photo strip was on top, like it always was.  It was nights when memories wouldn’t leave her alone and she couldn’t put the past away and focus on the present that she looked at these photos.  The only tangible proof of her and Goku’s relationship. It wasn’t that she went out of her way to hide it--they just were always so caught up in the moment together, that they had never thought to record it.  That had gnawed at her the first few months of her self-imposed exile from him. She had nothing to remember him except for a strip of pictures--and a child growing inside her.

She looked at the strip, taken in one of those booths along the boardwalk.  It had been cramped in there and he was so big, she had had to sit on his lap.  The pictures were all pretty standard of them smiling and him kissing her cheek while she was mid-laugh, but the last one always caught her, even all these years later.  She was in profile, looking up at him, while Goku grinned. In their own ways, they both looked so in love. Love. They could have been, once, but her own youthful stupidity saw to the end of it.  She was lucky Goku even spoke to her.

And even then, that was only through Gohan.  Gohan, who she had also let down. Chi-Chi closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against the smooth wood of her desk.  Everything was a mess and it was her fault. Her father, as much as he spoiled her, always taught her to take responsibility for her own actions.

She had to clean up her own mess.

Chi-Chi lifted her head to look at the photo strip again.  First of all, she had to assess her feelings for Goku. Knowing sleep was beyond her, she properly sat at her desk and pulled out one of her notebooks she kept in a side drawer.  She took a pen from her color-coded cups for pens and clicked it on. This notebook was new and she opened the cover to the first page. She stared at the snowy white paper and down at the pen in her hand.  What would she write?

The boy and girl in the photo strip were so happy.  They were so in love. She thought back to seeing Goku on the boardwalk.  The look of surprise on his face when he saw her replaced with hurt. The way her own stomach flipped.  She closed her notebook and felt tears prick her eyes. She knew the answer. She didn’t have to “assess” anything.

She still had feelings for him, and it didn’t matter because she had ruined everything.

\--

Something was changing.  Bulma wasn’t sure what it was but it had been building over the past couple of weeks and now she was starting to see the pattern.  It began with sex because, she realized, that was how it always began with them. Or maybe that wasn’t true. Everything at this point was all twisted up in her head and she was having a hard time keeping track of it all.

Either way, the sex was changing.

Before, they kind of skipped formalities and fucked like the world was ending.  Now, she would come over and they would watch a movie or part of a TV series and then slowly fool around.  They engaged in foreplay now when before there wasn’t much fanfare. She remembered her previous thoughts about how it was a side effect of all the sex and it had to be.  Even when they fooled around, they stayed partially dressed (of course he kept his pants on until they were under the covers and doing more), so she didn’t know what to think at this point.

It was probably nothing and her mind--that always went too fast--was just reading too much into it.  They were getting comfortable with each other as people. He was still her “not-boyfriend.” It was a by-product of it 

Thinking of this way kept things very scientific and logical and that was where Bulma always thrived.

As far as she could tell, Vegeta still felt the same way, which worked out.  Yet, here they were, sitting in a bar with his friends. Bulma looked at Lapis to have a focus point.  Chi-Chi, who notably hated gossip, hadn’t spilled the beans that she knew who Lapis’s Mystery Man was. She herself had to walk into the bar and see him hanging off of the big hottie from the garage (who was, incidentally, Goku’s big brother) and be surprised like a fucking animal.

He was looking at her with that trademarked bemused look of his that used to grace billboards and editorials but, when he thought people weren’t looking, he would look at Raditz with actual fondness.  Truthfully, she had had no idea that he had the ability to smile in a way that  _ wasn’t _ sardonic.

“How is everything?” she asked, addressing Goku instead.

He stared at her blankly and, not breaking eye contact, lifted a shot of vodka someone had brought to the table and tossed it in his beer.

“That good, huh?”

He shrugged and then gave an approximation of his usual smile. “Gohan’s great.”

“He is,” she agreed.  More carefully, she broached, “And Chi-Chi?”

Goku turned away and brought his glass to his lips.  She watched his throat work for a moment as he made quick work at gulping down half of the fortified beer within.

_ Got it. _

She sipped her own beer--one that was decidedly not fortified by vodka--and glanced at the empty chair next to her.  Vegeta had gone up to mess with the digital jukebox since he said that they kept playing shit in the bar. Bulma braced herself for whatever dreary, eighties post-punk song he had picked to play.

He came back to the table and dropped back into the seat next to her.  He pointed up above their heads and Bulma craned her neck as if it would make her hear the music better.

“What is this?” she asked.

“‘And She Was’ by the Talking Heads,” he said, reaching for his beer. “It reminds me of you.”

Bulma’s fingers cramped around her glass.  That was a bit too friendly, wasn’t it? Thinking of songs that remind them of each other.  She tipped it to her mouth and then dropped it on the table. Hastily, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, forgetting about her lipstick.  She stared at the dark red smeared on her hand and cursed. He seemed to realize what he said as well and made that now all too familiar sound through his teeth.

“I just like the song.  It doesn’t--you know.”

Bulma nodded.

“I definitely know.  It’s fine.”

She laughed and he made a sort of face and, at the same time, they both reached for their glasses once more.  As Bulma lifted it back to her mouth, she caught Lapis giving her a knowing look.

_ Oh, fuck off… _

Bulma decided she needed to stop this and fast before her shitty, fast-moving brain started getting dumb ideas about having  _ feelings _ for him or something.  She spared a look to Vegeta who was staring at the ring of condensation at the bottom of his glass like it was going to impart the mysteries of the universe.  Even if--and it was a  _ big _ if--she was starting to Feel Things, it wasn’t like Mr. Grumpy Emotionally Distant was going to return them, so they might as well just stop pretending and get on to what they both wanted.  She reached out and put her hand on Vegeta’s elbow.

“Let’s just go to your place.”

His brow furrowed for a moment as he drained his glass, but then he nodded.

“Sure.”

Bulma exhaled.  They were on the same page.  This was just about sex. Nothing else.

\--

The music on the old, dusty boombox in the garage was staticky but Gohan still hummed along.  Goku wasn’t sure why they were here other than the fact that he had Gohan for the day and he had been dispatched by his mom to bring everyone lunch.  That made sense, then, but now he was still here. Fasha had somehow procured a tiny pair of overalls for Gohan to wear (judging by the name stitched into them, they had once been Caulifla’s) and he sat happily on an unused toolbox, eating his sandwich.

Goku watched his brother hunched over the open hood of the car and twisted his mouth to the side.  He remembered when he first came home at age sixteen and his brother had greeted him by punching him in the shoulder lightly and going, “Hey, I’m gay and if you have a problem with that, you can go back to Papaya Island.”  In the nearly ten years since then, he had seen him go through his fair share of relationships. Maybe he could have some advice for what to do with Chi-Chi.

“Hey…” he said, wanting to broach the subject carefully since Gohan was right next to him. “Your boyfriend seems nice.”

“He is.  Mostly.” He snorted a laugh. “Nice to me, anyway.”

“I’m glad.” He paused. “What about your other ones?  Like...they weren’t...great, right?”

Raditz righted himself and wiped his hands on an already filthy rag.

“You mean my cavalcade of shitty boyfriends?”

“Well.  Yeah.” He winced at the usage of language.  From what he could tell, Chi-Chi was careful about what she said around him and now a week around his family and friends and he was learning all sorts of new words.

_ Well, it probably is the same as them hanging around Bulma… _

In the time since he had met her, he knew that his roommate’s...whatever she was to him had an absolutely foul mouth.

“Hm.” Raditz tapped his finger on the rag and rolled his eyes skywards. “Well, I don’t know if I can actually count Jeice as a shitty boyfriend.  Like, he cheated on me but with his ex and they’re, like, getting married now or whatever. Zarbon was absolute garbage and was cheating on me with, like, five other dudes who also didn’t know about each other.  Uhh...Turles was fine, but we make better friends than boyfriends. I dunno. Why do you wanna know?”

“Just...wondering.”

“This about RB?”

_ “Chi-Chi,” _ he emphasized.

He shrugged and turned back to the car.

“I just...it’s weird.”

Goku frowned.  He knew he still had feelings for her, but he was mad at her, too.  Betrayed, hurt...so much. Too many feelings at once. It was enough to do his head in.

“Yeah.  I mean, hey, I may have been cheated on but at least none of them kept a kid from me for four years.”

“Raditz!”

He gestured to Gohan who had stopped eating and was looking at them with those big, dark eyes that were so much like Chi-Chi’s.

“Surprises are better when you wait for them,” he said quietly.  He angled his gaze up towards Goku and gave him a sweet smile.

That...sure was one way of putting it.  He reached out to ruffle his hair.

“Definitely.”

\--

Goku hadn’t been expecting this.  He had texted Chi-Chi to let her know that he and Gohan were on the train back and she had responded by saying to meet her at a restaurant, her treat.  He was torn because they hadn’t actually spent time together since their stilted and awkward time on the boardwalk. But he also wasn’t one to turn down freed food.

**You:** _it’s the least you can do_

He made sure to put some laughing emojis to let her know he wasn’t actually angry--or was he?  He had no clue these days and the talk with his brother hadn’t helped. He felt in a flux in the whole situation and he didn’t know what to do.  The only thing he  _ did _ know was how he wanted to do right by Gohan and spend as much time as possible with him.

“It looks like we’re meeting your mom for dinner.”

Gohan perked up significantly.  He squeezed Goku’s hand where he held it.

“Where?”

He stared at the address Chi-Chi sent him and shrugged.

“No idea.  It says it’s a burger place, though.”

He could only imagine what West Park’s idea of a burger place was.  Gohan wiggled in his seat and smiled.

“Dinner with mama and daddy!”

He felt a pang of sadness in his chest that he couldn’t explain.  That  _ would _ be nice, wouldn’t it?  A family dinner? He fought the urge to wipe a weary hand down his face.  He needed to figure himself out let alone figure out how he felt about Chi-Chi.  At least for Gohan’s sake if not his own.

The burger place was exactly what he expected.  It was made to look like a lived in pub with its dim lighting and dark wood furnishings but he was certain that each burger on the menu cost at least twenty bucks.

Chi-Chi was waiting for them at a table near the bathrooms.  Even in the forcibly “atmospheric” lighting, she looked absolutely gorgeous.  She was wearing one of those romper things and her hair was back from her face and Goku’s breath caught in his throat.  She stood when they approached the table.

“Hey.” She nervously licked her lips and waved a hand. “How was your day?”

Goku lifted Gohan up into his seat and took one next to him.  He didn’t do it deliberately but, even though the table was round, he had put their son between them.  He took his own seat and swallowed against his own nervousness.

“Great,” He smiled at Gohan because that, at least, he didn’t have to fake. “Tell mama what we did.”

Gohan kneeled up in his seat and looked at her, eyes bright.

“I helped Uncle Raditz fix someone’s transmission,” he said excitedly.

“Oh, that sounds wonderful, baby.”

Goku picked up the menu and, sure enough, every burger was what Nappa would call “telephone numbers.”

“I thought you’d like this place,” Chi-Chi said in a stilted voice. “I mean, I figure you still like burgers.”

“Uh.  Yeah.”

He looked over the menu, not really absorbing anything that he was reading.  Chi-Chi stirred her straw through her glass of water and rolled her lips in. Maybe dinner was a mistake.  There was this...pressure at the table. This weird, unspoken barrier between them because of what she had done.

“What are you having, Gohan?” he asked.

“Mac’n’cheese,” he said with practiced ease.

Chi-Chi shook her head. “They don’t have mac’n’cheese here, baby.  How about a burger?”

“No.  I want mac’n’cheese.”

Goku grinned at him. “I’m getting a burger.  You wanna get one like daddy?”

His eyes lit up. “Okay!”

Chi-Chi cast him a relieved smile.  He chanced one in return. At least they had Gohan.  What was between the two of them, though, he wasn’t sure.

\--

By all accounts, Bulma shouldn’t have missed it.  She had been the one who got into her own head with wanting her relationship with Vegeta to go back to the way it was.  And they had. Now they just got down and dirty whenever they had an itch to scratch. No longer did they watch horrifically bad movies to make fun of them.  No longer did she hang out with his friends at his favorite bar. No longer did he say that certain songs reminded him of her. This was what she wanted.

So why was she bugging?

“I don’t know why you’re bugging,” Yamcha said.  He raised his BLT to his mouth and took an enormous bite.  Through a full mouth, he said, “I thought this guy was just your fuck buddy.”

“He is.” Was?  Bulma shook her head and tucked some hair behind her ears. “So I don’t know why I’m freaking out and I was  _ hoping _ one of my  _ best friends _ could help me out here.”

He had the nerve to shrug as he swallowed the bite of food.

“Sorry.  Why not ask Chi-Chi?”

“She has enough to deal with, don’t you think?”

He bobbed his head in agreement.

“Right.  The babydaddy’s back.” He arched his brows. “Is he hot?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

While that  _ was _ true, Goku wasn’t exactly Bulma’s type.  She always liked something a bit different, a bit more striking.  Even Yamcha with his matinee idol good looks had those scars on his face that first drew her to him when he was a freshmen in college (she, of course, was a junior, but they had been the same age since she had started university so early).  Or, more recently, Vegeta’s arresting and eye-catching features. She pushed the thought out of her mind.

“Well, what do you think?”

Yamcha picked a french fry off of his plate and pointed at her with it.  Bulma batted it away with her fork.

“I think you like this guy,” he said. “And you were getting close and it freaked you--and, hey, maybe him--out so you regressed to just sex.  But now that you have, you miss what was there ‘cause it’s gone.”

Bulma jabbed her fork into the half-eaten macaroni salad on her plate and sighed.  Why did Yamcha have to be like this? Totally goofy one minute and then reading her to her absolute core the next?

“I do not,” she said because she had nothing else to say.

“Look.” He gestured once more with the french fry before popping it into his mouth. “I  _ know _ you, Bulma.  You got this way with me, too.  Just  _ admit _ your damn feelings to yourself, at least.  You’ll do much better in the long run.”

That was, in fact, the difference between them and probably why Yamcha was getting married in the fall and she was arguing with herself about her feelings for Vegeta.  But what  _ were _ her feelings?  She tapped the tines of her fork on the edge of her plate and puffed out an exasperated breath of air.

Vegeta was...a lot.  He was cagey and emotionally constipated except when he wasn’t--like him telling her about why he was arrested.  How he was a Prince. He had weird taste in music but never made fun of hers when she insisted they listen to the radio instead of Ian Curtis while they were fucking.

She skewered a piece of macaroni and brought it to her lips.  He was stunted to be sure, but wasn’t she as well? Was Yamcha right, though?  Of course she was attracted to him and had feelings for him in the sense that she enjoyed having sex, but.  She also enjoyed sitting with him and watching movies or that time they walked on the beach together. She enjoyed coordinating trips to the gym and hanging out with his friends at the bar.  Bulma felt her fingers go weak and her fork tumbled out of her hands.

“Oh, fuck me,” she groused. “I think I’m falling for him.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i somehow managed to finish chapter 8 on time! there is still a potential delay on the next chapter but i hope you all enjoy this one!

It had been some time since they had the entire group together.  Even when most of them could go out, someone (usually Tien) found a reason to stay home.  Somehow, though, Yamcha had convinced his sour fiancé to join them. It probably had to do, Bulma wagered, with the fact that they were up above the dance floor in a privately rented VIP suite.  Tien hated crowds.

She watched the two of them together and felt a pang of jealousy.  It wasn’t that she thought she and Yamcha could or should have had it instead, but it was coupled with her dumb realization from the other day.  How could she have screwed up so badly as to develop feelings for Vegeta? It was pathetic. It was formulaic. It was nothing she wanted and yet there she was, missing the casual intimacy they had given up because they wouldn’t admit their feelings.  Or she wouldn’t. Like with most things, she had no idea what Vegeta was thinking.

“My boyfriend’s coming,” Lapis said. “I’ve decided since Chi-Chi and Bulma have met him then I  _ guess _ the rest of you do.”

Lazuli flicked her gaze to her brother and said, “So good of you to deign me worthy of meeting your latest conquest.”

He looked past her to lock eyes with her husband.

“He’s six-five,” he said. “How tall are you again, Krillin?”

Lazuli bristled but she didn’t say anything.  Bulma exchanged a look with Yamcha who raised his brows.  There  _ was _ a schism between the twins, if these little barbs were anything to go by.  Truthfully, Bulma had to hand it to Lapis. Goku’s brother was way hotter than poor Krillin.  While she knew that Lazuli wasn’t as shallow as she appeared and that Krillin was perhaps the nicest and most genuine person in the world, no simple outsider (like those annoying gossip blogs) seemed to see that.

“It’s interesting,” Lapis continued.  He paused for a moment to sip his drink and then gestured with his free hand. “Since it turns out my boyfriend is Gohan’s dad’s brother.”

Chi-Chi crunched down hard on one of the ice cubes from her cup.

“He’s what?” Krillin asked, eyes wide.

“Oh, I thought Bulma told everyone.  Oops.” He said this without an ounce of remorse, but then his expression changed when he saw Chi-Chi’s face. “Sorry.”

That, at least, sounded genuine.

“It’s fine,” she said, voice tight. “It’s just.  Difficult.”

Bulma could see that.  Last time she saw Goku, he was dropping shots of vodka in his beer.  Chi-Chi didn’t seem much better and, honestly, focusing on everything around her was easier than dwelling on her dumb, newfound feelings.

The door to their lounge opened and she turned to see that Raditz had arrived.  He seemed aware that all eyes were on him and he stopped short of the table, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck.  That is, until he saw Chi-Chi and his expression grew stormy. Right. She knew exactly where his loyalties were in the “Chi-Chi took off and never told Goku she had his child” saga.  Chi-Chi was her best friend, but she could see both sides. It was tricky, to say the least.

Lapis seemed to notice the tension because he got up from their table and made his way over.

“Hey, you found it okay.  Good.” He rose up on his tiptoes to kiss his cheek and Bulma saw Krillin futilely sit up taller in his seat.

“Yeah.  No problems.

He slipped his arm in his and led him over to the booth.

“This is my boyfriend, Raditz,” he said.

“Hey.”

“This is my sister, Lazuli, and her husband, Krillin.  That’s Yamcha and Tien. And you know Bulma and.” For once, she saw Lapis actually look sheepish.

“I know Chi-Chi,” he said flatly.

“Right.”

He led him to the booth and Krillin scooted over to give him room.

“It’s, uh, nice to meet all of you.”

“What do you do for a living?” Lazuli asked immediately and without preamble.

“I’m a mechanic.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly and Bulma leaned forward.  This night was just perfect for getting her mind off of her own problems.

“And how did you meet my brother?”

Lapis interjected. “I was heading up a beach clean-up over the bridge.”

“And he was there to help?” Krillin asked.

“No,” Lapis said.  He aimed a smile at Raditz and said, “He came up and said ‘what are these hipster assholes doing on my beach?’”

Raditz shrugged. “Look, always gotta be on the lookout for signs of gentrification.”

Krillin laughed and Lazuli seemed appeased.

“You’re Saiyan?” Tien asked.  Yamcha smiled, apparently pleased that he was being social for once.

“The accent didn’t tip you off?” Raditz shot back, but he was smiling.

“What was Sadala like?” Yamcha asked. “I heard it’s beautiful there.”

“I left when I was six.” He paused. “I don’t remember much.”

Bulma noticed a shift in how he spoke of Sadala.  It was similar to the way Vegeta got cagey whenever the coup was brought up.  Other than glibly stating he had zero desire to take his country back, to fulfill some “long lost prince” narrative, he never spoke of his home.  It didn’t take that great big brain of hers to deduce that he (and the others) had deep-seated trauma they didn’t want to have to unpack in front of strangers.  She did, though, see Lapis reach out to stroke his bicep and wondered how close they had become and what he had shared. Did he open up privately, at least? In ways Vegeta didn’t?  And why did every thought go back to him? She was trying to get her mind  _ off _ of him.

“I didn’t mean to,” Chi-Chi blurted out.

Bulma wondered if she missed some kind of conversation in her preoccupation with her own thoughts but, no.  Everyone looked just as confused as her at what she said. Chi-Chi twisted the cherry stem in her drink and sighed.

“Your brother,” she said. “I never meant to hurt him or leave him like that.”

Immediately, Raditz’s face darkened. “Well, it did.  You devastated him, RB.”

“I know.  I want to…make up for it.”

“You could start by--”

Bulma cleared her throat loudly.  She might have wanted a distraction from her thoughts, but she didn’t want an all out argument.

“So!” she said. “Who wants drinks?  I’ll go find the bottle guy, huh?”

\--

Vegeta jerked awake, chest clenched and sweat cooling on his brow.  He sat up in bed and rubbed his temples wearily. The nightmares were less frequent, but sometimes they crept up on him.  Wordlessly, he pulled the covers back and padded towards the kitchen in search of a glass of water. Of course, he realized that every one of their cups was filthy and in the sink because Kakarrot could never remember to use only one or to at least wash the ones he used.  Instead, he rummaged in the cupboard into her found a chipped coffee mug. He filled it with water from the tap and leaned against the counter as he sipped it.

After he had a nightmare or night terror, he had to take time to decompress before he went back to bed.  It was routine now, something he had been experiencing since he was five. It would almost be background noise if it didn’t jar him every time.  He scowled down into his mug. With everything else that had happened with him, he could compartmentalize it, but this--this would probably always sneak up on him.

That wasn’t the only thing sneaking up on him either.

He hadn’t meant to develop feelings for Bulma, but wasn’t that how these things went?  There was truly no such thing as routinely fucking without emotions and he was a fool to try and convince himself otherwise.

The weirdest part was how her idiosyncrasies that had first annoyed him on that fateful drive that felt like months ago were now endearing.  He  _ liked _ her know-it-all attitude or how there was no thought she felt that she shouldn’t vocalize.  She was bossy and loud and wasn’t afraid to take up space.

And where did that leave him?

He would be dumb to think that she felt the same way.  While he had fallen into the trap, Bulma was a certified genius (his own intelligence, the court had said at his sentencing, was “squandered” on criminal means, but that was life) and surely could see things from the clinical mind of a scientist.

She had also been in actual relationships before.  More than once, Vegeta had heard her mention how she was friends with her ex.  What did he have? That cashier at ABP who he fucked at the bar (which Kakarrot  _ still _ didn’t let go as if there weren’t fifteen other places to get an egg, bacon, and avocado breakfast sandwich)?  Other random hookups that rarely even made it back to his apartment? The fact of the matter was that he had no clue how a relationship actually worked.  This arrangement with Bulma was the closest he had to anything real. Maybe that was it. He was almost fucking thirty and hadn’t had a real, mature relationship.  Even if one ended badly, he would have  _ something, _ but there was nothing.  He was a fucking novice at this.

Vegeta sourly took another sip of water.  He dumped the rest of the mug into the sink and placed it next to the sink because he wasn’t a fucking animal who used a cup once and threw it in the sink.  He punctuated that thought with a glare towards Kakarrot’s closed bedroom door.

He walked back to his room, a jumble of thoughts going through his mind.  The past, he couldn’t put away because it would always be there but his present, this thing with Bulma, he could ignore.  He could just...drown out his feelings with sex, like they had been doing.

He got back into bed, smirking a bit and pleased with his decision.

\--

Chi-Chi pretended that she didn’t know why she went through the trouble of taking the train cover the bridge, but she really did.  She breathed in the slightly salty air of Saiyan Town was grateful that the ocean breeze meant that it was marginally cooler than the city, which was in the throes of the hottest part of the summer.  She had had to keep Gohan inside most of the time since it was too hot to even spend time at the park by midday.

Here, she didn’t have to worry about him overheating.  The weather was cooler and--she trusted Goku.

Then why was she here?

Dinner, awkward as it had been, had made her realize just how much she had missed him.  She wanted to find him and spend time with him and their son. Of course, she couldn’t just text him and crash his day with Gohan, but she could find out where he was, maybe and...crash...his day with Gohan.

Crap.

Coming here was a mistake.

Chi-Chi tucked her hair behind her ears and straightened her back.  Well, she was here, now she had to live with it. Why was it that this happened whenever she deviated from her carefully constructed timetables and schedules that she completely screwed up everything?  Why was she unable to improvise? If she could just  _ react _ to something as it happened rather than being thrown off because something didn’t go as planned?  If she was capable of this, this wouldn’t be an issue. She could have told Goku when she was pregnant.  They could have stayed together--maybe. Or who knew what else?

She sighed.

On top of everything else, she had to stop dwelling in the past.  It wasn’t doing her any good. So she had to focus on the now. Her feelings for Goku aside, if they were going to co-parent properly then things between them had to get at least a  _ little _ less awkward.

“Yes,” she said out loud. “That is totally why I’m here.  Get outings together normally. Yes.”

A few people mounting the steps with her gave her a look and Chi-Chi pretended that she didn’t mind the stares.

Of course with her reluctance to text him, she had no idea how to find Goku.  She knew his mother owned a deli and, while she had never been, she knew the name of it, at least, since it was Goku’s actual last name.

Everything in Saiyan Town was an easy walk from the subway station, and the seabreeze helped.  She remembered being over here that summer nearly five years ago and thinking about how nice it was.  How she thought about, when she graduated, maybe the two of them could get an apartment here. Right. How young she had been.

Anserina’s Deli was on the corner and Chi-Chi was aware that, by going in, she was technically entering enemy territory.  Raditz’s chilly reaction to her at the club spoke volumes. She pulled the door open, a bell ringing overhead signaling her entry.

“Heya!  Welcome to--” Goku’s mother’s words trailed off.  Her face grew stony. “What are you doing here?”

Chi-Chi let the door close behind her and loosely held her arms around herself.

“I’m, um, looking for Goku.”

“Why?” she demanded.

She dropped her arms and gestured to her bag hanging from her shoulder.

“Gohan left his favorite cup at home,” she said. “He’s kind of particular about things and sometimes won’t drink water if he doesn’t have the cup.”

That was true, even though she was certain that she left the cup with Goku when he came over to get him that morning.  His mother, however, didn’t know that.

“I get that about kids,” she said, her face softening a measure. “When he was little, Raditz would only eat out of green bowls and plates.  It was a hassle taking him anywhere.”

Chi-Chi wisely didn’t say that, judging by his size, it seemed far-fetched that it would ever be a “hassle” to get him to eat.  Instead, she nodded, glad for the moment of motherly solidarity.

“So if you could just tell me where they are, I can--”

“Wait,” She held up a gloved hand and Chi-Chi was suddenly very aware that she had a meat cleaver in her other hand. “I need to talk to you.”

She noticed, then, that her accent was much thicker than Goku’s, whose came and went.  Raditz’s was thicker, too, and he had said that he regretted losing it during his years on Papaya Island.

“Yes?”

“Where do you get off?” she demanded. “Tossing my son aside and then coming out of the woodwork with a kid?  And what’s this now? Coming all the way over here and what? Going to entangle yourself with him again and then take off when it suits you?”

“No,” she said.

It  _ didn’t _ suit her then and it wouldn’t suit her now.

“You West Park girls are the same,” she said and brought the cleaver down on whatever animal she was breaking down because--as the sign out front advertised--they did their butchering in house. “Come over here, looking for a thrill, and not give a shit who you hurt in the process.”

“We aren’t,” she argued futilely.

Chi-Chi knew that she didn’t have to explain herself, but she also knew that she couldn’t blame his mother for wanting to stick up for him.

“I made a mistake,” she said. “And I’m trying to fix it.”

“Are you?”

“Yes!” She sighed in frustration. “I never wanted to keep Gohan from him and whether or not he wants anything to do with me, I’ll never keep him away from him again.”

“Uh-huh.” She dropped the cleaver on the counter. “And you?”

She took a deep breath.

“How I feel doesn’t matter.  It’s up to him.”

She stared at her for a moment, dark eyes boring into her soul.  Chi-Chi shifted from foot to foot and lifted her chin.

“He took Gohan to the boardwalk to ride the kiddie rides,” she said.

Chi-Chi nodded. “Thank you.”

She lifted a shoulder in a shrug.

“No problem.”

Not wanting to incite her ire further, Chi-Chi slunk out the door with nothing more than a smile and a mumbled farewell.

\--

Goku was easy to spot.  His perpetually messy hair, at least, was noticeable enough that Chi-Chi could recognize him just by the back of his head.  He stood on the side of the kiddie boat ride, which was just taking off as she approached. Gohan sat in a small boat floating in the moat of bright blue water with other kids.  The boats were outfitted with little bells and the other kids weren’t hesitating to ring them. Gohan, though, merely twisted his steering wheel contentedly from side to side. When Chi-Chi approached, he broke into a smile and started waving.

“Hi, mama!”

Goku turned, surprised, eyes wide.

“Oh...hey.”

He seemed surprised to see her but not upset or disappointed.  That was good...right? Chi-Chi pushed those thoughts away quickly.  Her feelings for him aside, she was here for Gohan and to mend their relationship to be that of two people who can occupy the same space without it being awkward.

“Your mom said you’d be here,” she explained. “I.  Wanted to see you both.”

Goku looked at her skeptically and Chi-Chi swallowed nervously.

“I can leave,” she said hurriedly. “If you’d rather have Gohan to yourself.”

He shook his head. “Stay.”

“Okay.  Right.”

This was the outcome she had hoped for but, honestly, she thought he might have cast her off.  Or maybe he wouldn’t. Goku was too nice for that. Too sweet.

The person operating the ride pressed a button that made a whistle sound and, on some underwater track, all of the boats began moving in a circle.  They both stood there, barely speaking, but the silence wasn’t awkward for once. It was almost companionable. Almost. Every time Gohan would go around, he would wave and, in unison, the two of them would wave back.

“Why’d ya come?” he asked after the third go around of the boats.

Chi-Chi toyed a little with the strands of hair that always fell in front of her ears when she pulled her hair back and chewed the inside of her cheek.

“I want things to be better between us,” she admitted. “For Gohan.  I don’t want him picking up on the tension.”

“That’s all?” His eyes were twinkling and he was smiling in a way that made her heart pitter-patter in her chest.

“Yes,” she said, nodding resolutely. “I know I can never make up for what I did so.  This is the best outcome.”

Goku didn’t say anything at first.  He looked at her, head bobbing from side to side like it always did when he was trying to figure something out.  Finally, he reached forward and brushed the back of his hand against her shoulder.

“I wouldn’t say that,” he said.

“Say...what?” she asked.

Did he not want to try?  Was he so hurt and angry and betrayed that this would be their forever normal?  Gohan dealing with the weird, awkward silences that stretched between his parents?

“That you can never make up for it.  You already are.”

Chi-Chi didn’t know what to say.  Emotion welled in her chest and part of her wanted to cry.  She still wasn’t sure if there was a chance for  _ them, _ but they were getting on a better path.

“You wanna hang around with us, then?” he asked.  His eyes were still twinkling and she realized that Goku was smiling his real smile at her for the first time since their fateful reunion on the boardwalk.

“Yes.  I mean, that’s why I came.”

The boats went around again and, again, they both waved in unison as Gohan went by.

“Awesome.” His smile grew mischievous and he added, “Maybe we can take Gohan to the ferris wheel.  Show him where he was conceived.”

Chi-Chi whacked him gently with her bag.

“You stop that right now.”

Goku laughed and batted her bag down with both hands. “Kidding, kidding.”

She wasn’t sure how he had figured out that that was the likely place where their son was conceived.  The ride had been stopped with their enclosed gondola nearly at the top and Goku had started kissing her.  As usual when she was with him, all logic and rationale went out the window and they had made love in the ten minute duration they had been stuck, with him actually finishing as the ride jerked back to life.  Chi-Chi had nearly had a heart attack as they moved, but when he was laughing and sweet, she couldn’t stay mad.

The boats were done and a ride attendant came around to help the kids out from their vessels.  Gohan ran towards the low gate circling the moat and beamed brightly.

“Did you see?” he asked, excited.

Chi-Chi nodded. “You were great, baby.”

He came out of the gate and immediately put himself between them, holding each of their hands in his.  She was startled at how natural it seemed. Her and Goku with their little boy in the middle.

“Mama decided to join us on our day at the boardwalk,” Goku said. “Isn’t that great?”

He nodded and beamed up at them both.

“Yeah!”

\--

The day had nearly been idyllic.  Chi-Chi carried a sleepy Gohan towards the steps to board their train and Goku trailed after them.  It had felt so natural. There were still some moments of tension and awkwardness, but it wasn’t like before.  Maybe it was the shock wearing off or maybe it was her confession and his reassurance, but it was good.

The sun was dipping below the buildings and she knew she had to get back.  They had a long train ride ahead and, loathe as she was to end the day, Gohan had a bedtime she wanted to stick to.

“Here’s his cup,” Goku said once they stopped at the turnstiles.

With her hands full of a tired four-year-old, she turned so he could slip the cup into her bag.

“He’s tired, huh?”

He reached out to stroke Gohan’s hair.  He wasn’t fully asleep, but he was getting there.

“We did a lot,” she said.

They had walked up and down the boardwalk and then on the beach.  Goku had showed him what food they could feed the seagulls and Gohan ran back and forth to collect shells he wanted to bring home--that were now weighing down Chi-Chi’s bag.  It almost felt like their dates before, and she wondered if Goku thought that as well.

“Yeah.  It was nice.” He smiled.

She nodded, feeling a smile make its way onto her face.

“Thanks,” she said.

Not just for the day, but for how he was becoming okay with this.  Becoming okay with her. Goku seemed to get it because he nodded.

“No prob.”

Then, probably without thinking, he leaned down as if to kiss her cheek.  Chi-Chi felt instinct take over--perhaps fueled by the unintentional nostalgia the day had given her--and turned towards it instead.  Their lips touched briefly and she felt a current of electricity flow from her head to her toes. They lingered for a moment in a chase, close-mouthed kiss before she realized what was happening.  Chi-Chi recoiled, startling Gohan out of his sleepy state for a moment before he settled his head back down on her shoulder.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. “That was uncalled for.  I. It’s getting late. Sorry. Bye, um. Sorry.”

She pressed her pass against the turnstile and shoved her way in, cursing herself for her audacity.  She didn’t want to spare a look at Goku standing on the other side of the turnstiles. She had ruined their day.  No, not only that. She had ruined everything. Again.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i made a whole post on tumblr about how i was pretty sure this chapter wouldn't be done in time and then i joked as i was working on it today that it'd be funny if i got it done still on thursday and then, well, i did. i hope you enjoy!

Bulma told herself that she was coming over so the two of them could talk.  She didn’t know what to do about her feelings for Vegeta so she could hide away and avoid it or face him.  She was never one to shy away from a confrontation. She always took it head on and damn the consequences. This was no different, but.  She didn’t want to tell him how she felt. She didn’t want to open herself up like that. Rejection was a leveling blow that she wasn’t sure she could take.

She had no idea how he would react.  Bulma was the complete package--she knew this, had always known this--but Vegeta was a mystery.  It didn’t matter how hot she was or how smart. If he didn’t reciprocate, he didn’t reciprocate. And then what was she doing except wasting her time?

But the sex was fantastic.  But he was emotionally unavailable and did she want that?  She was turning thirty in a mere two years and was she really about to continue to do this to herself?

“Hey.”

Her jumbled and nonsensical thoughts were interrupted by the apartment door opening.  Goku stood on the other side, looking spent and tired. Dark circles ringed his eyes and his hair was in even more disarray than usual.

“Hey,” she said back, almost softly.

He rubbed the heel of his hand against his eye and yawned.  Stepped aside to let her in. Poor guy looked wrecked. She had admittedly been too wrapped up in her own issues to be up to date on the situation between him and Chi-Chi, but it clearly wasn’t going well.

“How are you?” she asked.

Goku hitched one shoulder and then gave her a sheepish smile.

“Sorry, I’m not all here right now.”

He gestured to the counter where Vegeta was doing the dishes.  She could tell from the way his shoulders were hunched around his ears that he had his usual scowl on and she hated that she knew that.  What kind of lovesick nonsense was  _ that? _

“He’ll be done in a sec.  I’m going to go lie down, I--” Goku cut himself off with a massive yawn. “Sorry.  I haven’t been sleeping lately.”

That much was evident.  Part of her was curious at what was happening on the Goku/Chi-Chi front, but part of her was also concerned.  She  _ liked _ Goku.  He was nice and sweet and, from what Chi-Chi told her, he was a great dad to Gohan despite being simply thrown into it a month or so ago.  Not to mention the amazing pancakes he made.

“Do you, uh--”

“No,” he said quickly, cutting her off. “I think you two need to talk more than me and you.”

That was an understatement and--wait.  Goku caught on to whatever had changed between them?  She doubted that Vegeta told him so maybe he was more observant than either of them had given him credit for.  Before she could press him, he went into his room and shut the door.

Vegeta turned the sing off and wiped his hands on a rag.

“He dirties almost every goddamn plate in then never cleans them,” he grumbled under his breath.

He looked up and seemed to notice her for the first time.  Maybe he hadn’t heard her over the sound of the sink?

“Goku let me in,” she explained.

“Oh.  Right.”

Bulma walked towards the kitchen and glanced at the plates drying on a plastic dish rack.  She thought it better to fixate on them rather than watch Vegeta. Why did she have to go and catch feelings?  Things were so much easier when she was simply making fun of his taste in music while he drove her over the bridge.  Hell, they were even easier when they first began sleeping together.

“So,” she began. “Things are weird, right?”

He shrugged and tossed the dish rag onto the counter.

“I guess.”

They both had their guards up.  Bulma wasn’t going to show her hand first and she for sure wasn’t going to tell him that she had feelings for him.  At most, she would maybe admit that she missed the casual part of their coupling and not  _ just _ have sex.  That was safe.  It wasn’t like they weren’t sort of friends as well as not-boyfriend and not-girlfriend, right?  That was a reasonable thing to ask.

“This isn’t about feelings,” she blurted out.

That seemed to ease him somewhat because Vegeta nodded.

“I know.  We established that.”

“It’s still established.”

He bared his teeth in agitation.

“I know.”

They were at an impasse.  Bulma could eat her words, swallow her pride, and admit her feelings or--

“We’re just too used to each other,” she said. “Let’s sleep with other people.”

“What?”

“I mean, it’s weird we’re exclusively fucking.  Or, at least, I’m fucking you exclusively.” She couldn’t stop herself but rambling like this was where she thrived. “I  _ hope _ you were fucking me exclusively, too, because I know I’ve let you raw dog me a couple times.”

Vegeta rolled his eyes.  He flicked his hand out and then turned it palm down.

“I haven’t fucked anyone else.”

“Okay, good.  So. Let’s hook up with other people to remind us that this isn’t about feelings.”

Vegeta looked at her for a moment, dark eyes unreadable.  Was he about to show his own hand? Not that she even entertained the thought that he was feeling what she was, but was he going to call her on her bluff?

“Fine,” he said after a moment. “But does that start now or can we fuck tonight?”

Bulma barked a surprised laugh.  Relief flooded through her, but there was a twinge of disappointment on the edge of her thoughts that she couldn’t shake.

“Yes,” she said, mentally stamping it down. “We can fuck tonight.”

\--

The club was crowded that night, but that was what Bulma wanted.  She wanted to blend in until she found someone to take home and fuck to get Vegeta out of her system.  They had the perfect plan and it involved neither of them giving in. Christ, they were so smart.

A few people had asked for a selfie with her but for most of the night, Bulma was gloriously left alone.  After so many times getting a VIP booth above the club, she forgot how much fun it could be to be in the thick of it.  It didn’t escape her observation that the last time she had been on the dance floor at this club, she had found an equally if not more drunk Vegeta and took him home for the first time.  Whatever, though. She wasn’t here to think about him. She was here to get tipsy and get laid.

She danced against Lazuli, glad to get down like they used to.  When she, Chi-Chi, and Lazuli would go out and dance. Of course, Chi-Chi was home with Gohan so their trio wasn’t fully reunited, but it was still fun.

While she danced with her friend, she spotted a guy by the bar, drinking from a bottle of beer.  He was tall and kind of lanky with blond hair. He wasn’t exactly her  _ type, _ but he was cute nonetheless.  Bulma pulled herself away and made her way towards the bar.  She wiped sweat from her brow and asked the bartender for a cup of water.  As she did, she could feel the man’s eyes on her. To give him a show, she pushed her backside out a little as she leaned over the bar.

“Just water?” he asked once she was handed her cup.

Bulma gave a noncommittal shrug and said, “I’m thirsty.”

“Are you?”

She chose not to answer and instead drank from the plastic cup she had been handed.  Once she drained it, she put it back on the bar.

“Not anymore.”

The guy grinned, apparently used to this game. “That’s too bad.”

Bulma looked at his face more clearly and decided that he’d do.  Not wanting to waste time, she crooked her finger to get him closer.  He leaned down and--oh, she wasn’t used to that. Vegeta was the same height as her if not a little shorter and she never had to wrap her arms around his neck to kiss him.  But wasn’t that what this was about?

The guy tasted vaguely like beer, but that was whatever.  Bulma felt his leg begin to work its way between hers. Felt his arousal already--Christ, was this guy already half-mast just looking at her?  Sure, she was hot, but that was kind of sad. But it didn’t matter, she told herself. This was to scratch an itch. This was to prove to herself that she and Vegeta were fine as is and she didn’t have feelings for him.

She gripped the guy’s shirt.  The raised print of it felt strange against her fingers and she opened her eyes to look at the design.  It was a Joy Division shirt, one of the typical Spent Pleasures shirts most people bought regardless of whether or not they actually listened to the band.  She stared at it and a strange feeling developed in her stomach. This wasn’t right. The height of the guy and now this shirt--it all felt wrong. She wasn’t one for denial or deluding herself.  This wasn’t the way. She had to face facts that she was completely smitten with Vegeta and that was that.

“You alright?” the guy asked.

“I’m fine.  I just. I have to go.”

He blinked at her, visibly confused, but he didn’t try to stop her.  Bulma shoved through grinding, sweaty bodies to get outside. There wasn’t much of a reprieve in terms of the weather.  The air was hot and heavy, smelling like grilled meat and street fumes. Even so, she gulped at the night air, a hand over her chest.  God, she was so fucked. She couldn’t even hook up with a guy. She imagined that Vegeta wasn’t having this problem but, then again, his sparkling personality wasn’t something that would be a hit with too many people.  Hell, it took a good while for him to endear himself to her in his own way.

Bulma wished she could go back inside and mack on that guy or even someone else, but she couldn’t.  Experiment failed and now she stood outside, shaking in her heels, and feeling like a fool.

“Bulma?”

Lazuli walked out, one manicured brow arched.

“You alright?”

What a question.  She laughed mirthlessly and shrugged.

“Not sure.  Things are weird lately.”

Lazuli stood and nodded.

“I feel that,” she said and watched cars sluggishly move through nighttime traffic on the street.

The exhaust smell mixed with everything else and Bulma felt her stomach turn.

“How are they weird for you?” she asked. “You and Krillin--”

“It’s my brother,” she said “We’ve been fighting more than ever lately and I have no idea why.  He just gets so...snippy. And sarcastic.”

Being a good friend, Bulma didn’t point out how the twins were both of those things to anyone at any given moment.

“And not telling me he has a boyfriend...he’d never do that before.” She frowned as if mad at herself for being so candid.

Bulma, though, was glad for a sort of distraction.  She knew she would have to deal with her confirmation on her feelings for Vegeta by herself.

“I think it’s Krillin,” she said because it was as good of a hypothesis as anything.

“Krillin?  Why? Does he not like him?”

She shook her head.

“No.  He loves Krillin--not like that.  I mean, think about it. When you were thinking about quitting modeling, who was the first person you told?”

Lazuli considered it for a moment, one hand going up to tuck some blonde hair behind her ear.

“Lapis.”

Bulma nodded.  She took a deep breath and kept talking.

“And when Lapis found out his last boyfriend was cheating on him with, like, five other people and also lied to him about using a condom during sex.  Who went with him to the clinic?”

“I did.”

She remembered when she first befriended the twins at some charity event and how they seemed to speak their own, silent language.  There was Lapis and Lazuli and then there was everyone else. It had been frustrating hanging out with them both because they would lapse into silence where they would seem to communicate solely through microexpressions.  Maybe quitting modeling made them realize that they could stop doing their  _ Village of the Damned _ impression, but Bulma didn’t think so.  Either way, this was an easier mystery to solve over untangling her emotions.

“But when you and Krillin got engaged, you told me and Chi-Chi first and Lapis found out from Yamcha, not you.  I think that hurt him.”

She scoffed. “We got married last year.  I don’t think he’s still pissed about that.”

Bulma shrugged. “He could be.  But it was you and him not being each other’s first go-to.  Before ‘keeping it from everyone else’ excluded each other, but he didn’t tell you about Raditz because it was his way to get back at you for not telling him about Krillin.”

The corners of Lazuli’s lips turned down as she absorbed that.  She bobbed her head a little in a nod, but didn’t answer her right away.

“I guess,” she said. “That makes sense...I’ll talk to him.  We haven’t done that in a while.”

Part of Bulma wished that this went on for longer because talking about the twins was a good distraction, but she didn’t want to push the issue.

“Whatever,” Lazuli said. “Enough about this.  There’s a twenty-four hour taco place two blocks up.  You wanna go?”

Bulma exhaled. “Absolutely.”

She could tell that Lazuli was as grateful as she was when she took her hand and started to drag her down the street.

\--

Inhale.  Hold. Exhale.  Vegeta repeated the motion to perform another deadlift.  He grunted with the effort and tried to concentrate on counting and breathing.  His mind, though, was elsewhere. He kept turning over his and Bulma’s agreement in his head.  Try to sleep with someone else. It was easier said than done since he rarely even made a move until he had a few drinks in him.

That, at least, was better than the prospect of losing her or having to deal with feelings.  There was no need to dwell on emotions when he was occupied with trying to fuck someone else, right?

He dropped the weights, narrowly missing the toe of his sneaker.

“Careful, big guy,” a voice chirped behind him.

Vegeta turned to see a woman had come up behind him.  She was bent over one of the weight benches, holding a three pound weight in her hand as she flexed her arm in reps.  He had been advised that as a teenager when he had fucked up his shoulder climbing over a fence to outrun the cops. Not a lot of weight but a ton of reps.

“I’m fine,” he said tersely.

The woman laughed.  In her workout gear, he could see that she had a curvaceous body.  Her tank top was cut low and form-fitting, revealing a substantial amount of cleavage.  Her hair, pulled back in a ponytail, was almost as blue as Bulma’s. It was a shade or two lighter but the comparison was there.  Her face, exquisitely made up despite the fact that they were at the gym, was pretty. Not like Bulma, but--

He almost physically shook his head.  Wasn’t this what they were talking about?  Getting it on with others?

“You’re definitely fine,” she said with a giggle.

Her flirting was unabashed and obvious, but it was somehow less endearing than when Bulma called him Prince Dickwad or anything else.

“Need a spotter?” she asked.  She righted herself and rolled her shoulders back.

Did he?  Vegeta stared at her for a moment.  It would be easy, probably. They could go up against the mirrors, bent over the weight bench.  She was willing, but was he? He thought back to Bulma and the idea they had. This would be it, right?  But already he felt hollow. He shook his head.

“No.”

“Aw, too bad.” Another giggle. “Can’t blame a girl for trying, right?”

He shrugged and turned back to his weights.

\--

It was time to face the music.  Bulma knew after her non-hookup at the bar that this was what she had to do.  She had to lay it out and deal with the fallout. It was the only way that she could have any amount of peace.

She knew Goku was out.  He and Chi-Chi were out with Gohan so she knew it would only be the two of them.  For better or worse.

“Hey,” Vegeta said gruffly when he let her in.

“I couldn’t fuck another guy,” she blurted immediately.

He stared at her, surprised, and then said, “Me neither.”

She tried to tamp down the relief that flooded through her.  So he was on the same page. What did that mean?

“He was wearing a Joy Division shirt,” she said, “and it made me think of you so I couldn’t go through with it.”

He didn’t say anything.  He just looked at her with those nearly black eyes of his and she took in a shaky breath.

“So.”

“So,” he repeated.

“Where does that leave us?”

Vegeta didn’t answer her.  They were doing it again. Admitting things without admitting anything.  She wanted to just tell him, but then she didn’t want to embarrass herself.

“Here,” he said finally.

He kissed her, pulling her close and Bulma kissed him back.  This she could deal with. Like always, they were in the bedroom and he was lavishing her with more affection than he had in weeks.  Bulma returned it, kissing down his chest, licking around his nipples, working him with her hand.

She held him against her, kissing him as he moved inside her.  It was different from before. Not just the sex or even before that when they gave in to more foreplay and pleasure before just getting it in.  It was languid and slow as if they were both figuring something out.

Afterwards, Bulma got up as she always did to use the bathroom.

“Be right back,” she said as if it weren’t obvious.

Vegeta got up as well and walked past her.

“I’m going to get a drink of water.”

She nodded to show that she heard but then stopped her head halfway through the motion.  He wasn’t naked but he had only put his boxers back on. Not his sweatpants. For the first time, she saw his legs.  They were scarred, she saw, with patches of pinkish-white skin as if he had been burned long ago. Bulma watched him walk past her and snagged his arm.

“Wait.”

“What?” he asked, slightly irritated.

“You didn’t put pajama pants on.”

He made a sound through his teeth and said, “I was trying not to make a big deal out of it.”

But it clearly was to him.  In the entire time she had been with him, he had always worn jeans or sweatpants, regardless of the temperature.  Now she could see why.

“What happened?”

He looked uncomfortable for a moment and then his shoulders dropped.

“The Acrosians set fire to our home while I was in bed,” he said. “I woke up and got out but when I was climbing out the window, the burning curtains got tangled in my legs.  They never really healed.”

Bulma tried to picture that.  It was over twenty years ago so he had to be a little kid.  She couldn’t imagine how he felt in that moment. Waking up to fire and death.  Losing your home.

She realized that this meant that they were In This.  He was showing a part of himself he kept hidden away. This was what meant by saying that “here” was where that left them.  Shit.

“Have you ever thought of going back?”

It wasn’t the first time she’d ask that but maybe he was in a more honest mood.  Vegeta shook his head.

“No, I told you.  There’s nothing for me there, now.”

“C’mon,” she said to lighten the mood. “It’ll be like  _ Anastasia. _  You’re the lost prince and I’m the stunningly beautiful conwoman who helps you.”

She turned herself around and pressed her back against his chest.  Pulled his arms around to rest around her waist. She heard Vegeta scoff again.

“History wasn’t like that movie,” he said. “And, besides, the Acrosians control the government.  I have nothing to claim. My title means nothing except a nickname everyone else calls me.”

He sounded a bit defeated and she couldn’t blame him.  Bulma turned around and kissed his temple gently, tenderly.

“Okay.” She sucked in a breath. “We have a lot to talk about, don’t we?”

“About  _ Anastasia?” _ he asked wryly.

Bulma rolled her eyes.  Difficult to the end.

“No.  Us. Let’s put clothes on and find one of those twenty-four hour diners or something.  Okay?”

Vegeta stared at her for a long moment and then he inclined his chin slightly.

“Okay.”

\--

Chi-Chi was glad that everyone in Goku’s family immediately accepted Gohan without question.  She knew that she was going to be on their shit list for some time, but no one seemed to hold it against her son.  Their son.

When they dropped him off at his grandparents’ place, Gine had immediately spun him around and covered his face with kisses and asked if he wanted to be her special helper for dinner.  That was one worry off of her mind, even if Bardock gave her a judgmental look and Gine’s words from the other day still rang in her head.

Not that she didn’t deserve both.

She knew Goku had said she was making up for what she had done and to stop blaming herself, but that was before she had made an idiot out of herself and kissed him.  This was the first time she was going to see him since then and now there was no Gohan between them. They were left with only each other.

The apartment was empty, which was confusing since Bulma had come with her on the train saying that she was going to talk to Vegeta.  Maybe they had gone out. His bedroom door was open and she didn’t see them or  _ hear _ anything, so that meant that they weren’t doing the dirty.

But now the two of them were alone at his place.  Chi-Chi bit her lip, wishing now that she had suggested a restaurant or somewhere public.

“I’m sorry,” she said once he put the deadbolt in place.

“For what?” Goku asked quizzically.

He motioned to the couch to invite her to sit but Chi-Chi shook her head.  She had nervous energy thrumming through her veins and the only way that she could get it out was from shifting her weight from foot to foot.

“For kissing you,” she said as if it were obvious.

He shook his head.

“You don’t have to.”

She...what?  Chi-Chi stared at him for a moment, trying to figure him out.  Goku was an open book, but she couldn’t find an answer on his beautifully symmetrical face.

“I don’t?”

He shook his head again. “No, you don’t.  Chi...listen.”

He took a step forward so he was close enough to feel the heat emanating off of him.  Close enough to smell him. Chi-Chi took a shaky breath.

“Yeah?” she asked, voice wavering.

“I haven’t forgiven you,” he said and her heart sank, “but I’m getting there.”

She swallowed. “Oh.”

He gently reached out and cupped her elbows with his hands.  This was the closest they had been since--her cheeks flamed at the memory.

“And there’s something else.” He let out a breath, awkward laugh. “Something I can’t shake.  And it’s...that I still have feelings for you.”

Her heart pounded in her ears so loudly that she thought she heard him wrong.  He hadn’t forgiven her fully, but there was hope. She hadn’t ruined things completely--or at least not irreparably.

“Goku…”

He quieted her with a soft and gentle kiss.  Chi-Chi let her eyes slip closed as their mouths slotted together.  It was different from the kiss at the train station. Her brain didn’t send panic signals and now her heart was pounding for another reason.  Goku took his hands off of her elbows and tightened them around her waist. Held her flush against his body.

She parted her lips and let him sink into her mouth.  She felt his tongue nudge past her teeth and move along the ridges at the roof of her mouth.  Chi-Chi lifted her tongue to touch his. She felt all lit up inside, turned on like a television.

“Goku,” she said, breathless. “We should--”

“Shh,” he whispered. “No talking for now.  I’m bad at words. I can’t put them together like you can.  I can’t tell you how I feel or what we should do but. This.  I can show you this. Will you let me?”

She stared at him.  He was even better looking now than he had been, then.  They had changed. He hadn’t forgiven her but was “getting there.”  For now, for now that would do. She nodded.

“Yes,” she said and kissed him once more.

Goku lifted her into his arms and, wordlessly, carried her into his bedroom.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things are calming down slightly on my end so hopefully the next chapter won't be me writing the entirety of this over the course of three-ish hours but thank you everyone for your support of this fic and hopefully continued enjoyment

Dimly, Chi-Chi knew that they shouldn’t be doing this.   _ She _ shouldn’t be doing this.  They had so far to go, so much to cover.

So much to talk about.

Yet, here she was in Goku’s bed, kissing him and reliving the memories she had used to help fall asleep in the intermingling years.  He kissed the same, she realized. Like he was starving or like he had been struggling in the desert and she was an oasis. He was always enthusiastic, sometimes sloppy, and she missed it.  She could hear his breathing grow heavy and it struck her as odd that puffing out air through his nose were the only sounds he was making. Before, Goku was very vocal. He would always be laughing or whispering in her ear.

“Goku…” she said, pulling her face away. “We should--”

He pulled back as well and Chi-Chi realized how hot her face had gotten when he wasn’t so close to her.  Goku sat back on his haunches, which just brought his crotch closer to hers and made her  _ itch. _

“I know,” he said, eyes downcast. “But I’m  _ bad _ at talking.  I told you, I just want to show you.  The rest we can figure out as we go.”

This was a colossally bad proposal and they both knew it.  Chi-Chi stared up at him, at the way the low light of his lamp caught his features.  The way light and shadows attached to him. She missed having his body in proximity to hers.  The past month had been nothing but awkward silences and diverted glances. She knew they had a long way to go and what they  _ should _ be doing was sitting down and talking about it.  Really talking about it, not simply avoiding things or using their shared love of Gohan has a buffer.

It was what they should be doing.

“Okay,” she said, surprised at how breathy her voice was. “Okay.”

Chi-Chi reached for him, but Goku didn’t immediately go into her embrace.  Instead he lifted his arms up to grasp at the back of his t-shirt and pull it over his head.  She stared at his exposed torso, his body familiar and strange at once. His muscles were more defined than before, his shoulders broader.  He got to work unbuttoning her sleeveless blouse and Chi-Chi arched her back so she could shrug out of it.

Every touch was electrifying, the rasp of his fingers against the cotton of her bra and the way he felt firm under her own touch.  Moments seemed to blip by and they were bare, his fingers between her thighs, teasing at where they met. Chi-Chi squirmed, remembering this well.  Goku was talking again, except he was asking if she was okay. It was like he thought she would bolt and she couldn’t blame him. She had ghosted him, after all.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” she kept assuring him.

Better than fine.  It had been so long.  The furthest she had gotten with a guy in the interim was someone who made out with her at the club and then freaked out when he realized she was  _ the _ Chi-Chi Mau and fear of her father had him scatter.  Other than that, it was her alone on sleepless nights, thinking of actors she fancied and trying not to let memories of Goku come back to her.

“We can…” she said and then bit her lip as the words died in her throat when his fingers twitched inside her.  She tried again. “We can--I want to.”

Goku’s hand stilled between her legs and he looked almost sheepish.

“I don’t...have...any.”

It took her a moment to piece together what he meant.  Oh. No, it probably wasn’t wise to risk giving Gohan a sibling when they hadn’t even talked about anything.

“I’ll be right back.”

Before she could protest, he kissed her and left the room.  Chi-Chi felt strange lying there, aroused and confused, and trying not to think of anything but the sensations they had been lost in just minutes ago.  Goku returned with condoms in hand.

“I hope Vegeta won’t miss these,” he muttered as he got back on the bed.

Chi-Chi took him into her arms, letting him kiss her worries away.  At least for the time being.

\--

The diner was all chrome and neon and boasted a menu with at least eight pages of dishes.  Bulma stared at the dinner specials, noting that you could apparently order a twenty-five dollar platter of fish or get a short stack of pancakes for under five.  Her stomach was too knotted to eat so she had opted for coffee. Vegeta had no such qualms and was shoving pork souvlaki into his mouth like he hadn’t eaten in a week.

She blew away the steam from her mug, cupping her hands around the ceramic sides as if it were the dead of winter and not the first week of August.  She dropped her hands and pressed her palms flat against the surface of the table.

“So,” she began, because it was as good of an opener as any.

It felt later than it was and the diner was mostly empty except for the staff doing their sidework.  There were a few other customers, but she felt like she and Vegeta were on another planet. They were isolated, alone.  Able to talk.

Or they  _ would _ be able to talk if Vegeta didn’t have his mouth full.  It was clearly a way to get  _ her _ to talk first of course.  He had marginally softened but Prince Dickwad was still Prince Dickwad.

“First things first, I like you,” she said. “As in, I have feelings for you.”

He finally swallowed and nodded. “Yes.”

Bulma exhaled a breath in frustration.  He couldn’t make this easy, could he?

“Yes what?” she impressed.

His mouth twisted and something in his jaw pulsed before he answered.

“I have feelings for you, too,” he said.

Bulma wasn’t sure if she was truly falling for him, but she was on her way.  She knew that. Him showing her his scars and telling her how he got them was an indication that he was on his way, too.  Clearly he didn’t share that with just anyone.

“So, what now?”

He licked tzatziki from his finger and lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I guess we drop the “not” from not-boyfriend and not-girlfriend.”

It sounded so juvenile when spoken aloud like that and what was honestly their problem?  They had been behaving like teenagers.

“Yeah, I agree,” she said.  Tentatively, she took a sip of her coffee and placed the mug back down.

This was so strange.  Almost formal. Bulma extended her hand across the table and Vegeta reached his out to meet it.  It felt like a handshake, like when they first made their pact so she turned her hand in his and laced their fingers.  He looked momentarily surprised and then did likewise. She laughed.

“We’re bad at this.”

“No shit.”

The atmosphere between them shifted and she felt something close to normal.  This was who they were. To the casual observer, they were a couple eating at a diner and maybe that was what they were.  They just had to make those next steps.

“My birthday party is next weekend.”

He stared at her with that intense gaze of his and, Christ, couldn’t he turn it off for a second?  Bulma tucked some of her hair behind one ear and sighed.

“I want you to come.  Meet my friends. I figure the days in between can be used to get used to...whatever this new thing is.”

The side of his mouth crooked in a smile and he nodded.

“Sure.”

Bulma felt invigorated, like they could do this.  She yawned, wishing she hadn’t settled on decaf, and gave his hand a squeeze.

“Let’s go to your place,” she said. “I’m tired.”

Vegeta nodded and rose, taking the check with him to pay at the front.  Seized with an idea, Bulma plucked it out of his hand and danced away.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m paying, Mr. Works at a Bodega Because He’s a Felon.”

“It was a misdemeanor,” he growled. “I can pay for one fucking dish and some coffee.”

She waved it above his head, giggling.

“Nope.  It’s my treat.”

The atmosphere, which had been steadily disintegrating, had disappeared.  They were at this banter again, the back and forth.

“Fine,” he said, throwing his hands up. “Pay it.  I don’t give a fuck.”

She bucked him with her hip and, for her efforts, got a grunt and a slight quirk of the lips.  She yawned again and, riding the feeling, dropped her head on his shoulder.

“I want to go back to your place and just sleep,” she said. “I’m wiped.”

He tensed for a moment but then relaxed and let her head stay there. “Alright.”

Bulma paid the check and turned to him once they stepped outside.

“I don’t think less of you,” she said, “About your job or your past.  Or anything.”

“I didn’t think you did.”

She placed both hands on his shoulders and kissed him because she could and because she wanted to try this out, really try out them as a couple and not just whatever they were before.

“Okay.  Just checking.  Now let’s go.”

\--

Bulma knew Chi-Chi had come with her on the train, but she honestly thought that she had gone home.  She had no texts from her and she knew Gohan was spending the night with Goku’s parents. She fully expected to get to Vegeta’s place and find Goku moping on the couch, shoulders hunched and expression morose at another awkward encounter with Chi-Chi.

Instead the apartment was seemingly deserted.  Bulma dropped her bag on the couch and rubbed her eyes blearily.  This roller coaster of an evening had taken its toll on her. Talking to Vegeta, the sex, talking again.  Coming to this conclusion. She wanted to sleep.

Muffled sounds came from Goku’s closed door and drew her attention towards it.

“Did he invite someone over?”

Vegeta shrugged and gave a yawn of his own.  At least she wasn’t alone in how exhausted she was.  Bulma couldn’t blame Goku if he sought comfort from someone else.  He and Chi-Chi were going through a Thing and he was probably confused.  More than a bit curious, Bulma walked towards the door. Truly, she was just going into Vegeta’s room but Goku’s was  _ on the way, _ and she had  _ very good _ hearing.

“Don’t be weird,” he said gruffly because apparently now this teasing was a two-way street.  It was kind of exciting.

“What?” she asked innocently. “I’m just passing by.”

He rolled his eyes and she opened her mouth to protest further but her close proximity and the relative thinness of the doors and walls allowed her to hear far more clearly.  She could hear low murmurs of indistinct words punctuated by deep grunts. A feminine voice joined in, sounding breathless. Bulma knew she had to leave the door--she was curious but not a voyeur.

“Goku--oh, God, please…”

“Shh, shh--Chi, it’s okay.”

_ Chi? _

As in--

“Chi-Chi?!” she shrieked, far more loudly than she meant to.

Vegeta had come up behind her in this meantime and clamped a hand over her mouth.  Too little too late, because the damage was done. Goku’s door opened and she saw her best friend on the other side, holding a shirt over her middle and staring with wide eyes.

“Bulma, I--”

There was a lot to unpack here and she had a feeling that Chi-Chi and Goku didn’t have the same sort of heart to heart she and Vegeta had.  She would have loved to wait for Chi-Chi to get dressed and they could dissect this, but she was incredibly tired.

“Fancy seeing you here,” she said once she pried Vegeta’s hand off of her mouth. “Don’t mind us.  We’re going to bed. Right?”

She elbowed Vegeta discreetly and he nodded.

“Bulma--”

She shook her head and held her hands out. “I don’t need an explanation.”

The “yet” went unsaid.  Chi-Chi nodded, but was biting her lip.  Truthfully, it wasn’t Bulma’s place to judge considering the state of her relationship with Vegeta over the past several weeks.  She gave her a meaningful look and walked away. Behind her, she could hear the door click back shut.

“Well that happened,” Vegeta said gruffly once they got to his room.

That was one way of putting it.

\--

Chi-Chi managed to maintain and not bring up anything that happened between them the entire rest morning.  Goku let her use the shower and Bulma graciously let her switch shirts so it wasn’t so obvious that they spent the night together when they went to pick up Gohan.  His parents hated her enough. She didn’t need this on top of it.

Truthfully, she wanted to keep it that way until they got their heads clear.  She didn’t  _ regret _ the act of sleeping with Goku, but they both knew that they had moved too fast and now things were awkward again.

“We should talk,” Goku said as they walked down the sidewalk.

“If you finish that sentence with ‘about last night,’ I’m going to scream.”

He laughed mirthlessly. “This isn’t easy, is it?”

Chi-Chi shook her head.  In the bright light of day, their mistake seemed far more obvious.  They were just making headway. She should have just apologized for her kiss and left it at that.  Both of them should have. She couldn’t deny how good it felt, though. Being with him felt natural, like before and yet new.  But with everything else…

God, she was so confused.

“Let’s just...see where we go,” she said. “Like it didn’t happen.”

Goku shook his head. “It did, Chi.  We can’t, like, sweep it under the rug.”

She chewed her lip.  He was right.

“I know,” she said and then sighed. “Maybe we can shift focus.”

He stared at her for a moment as they waited for the stop light to turn.  Finally, he nodded.

“That makes more sense,” he said. “Shift focus.”

“To Gohan,” she said.

“To Gohan,” he agreed.

At their core, she knew they both wanted what was best for their son.  Between them, that was another issue. The light turned and they stepped into the crosswalk.  They were two blocks from Goku’s parents’ house when he spoke again.

“You were amazing, though.”

Her face burned. “Oh, my God!  Goku!”

She smacked him lightly with her bag and this time his laugh was real.  She found herself laughing back. This was okay, this was better.

At the house, she saw a motorcycle leaning on its kickstand parked on the street.  There was no driveway here, just street parking, but the sight of it was still odd.  When she had dropped Gohan off, there had been no bike here.

“Oh, my brother’s here.”

Chi-Chi fought back a grimace.  Great, all three members of the We Hate Chi-Chi Club present and accounted for.  She still remembered Raditz’s icy reception to her at the club last week. Goku used his key to let them in and stepped into the living room.

Gohan let out a wild peal of laughter as his uncle lifted him up and threw him on the couch.  She felt momentarily worried and, briefly, the image of her baby bouncing off of the cushions and smashing his head open on the floor entered her mind but when Gohan was laughing like that, she couldn’t bring herself to stop it.

“Again!” he said and lifted his arms.

“Again?  You’re tiring me out.” 

Raditz laughed and lifted him up.

“I’m not,” Gohan said.

“You’re right.  You weigh less than a sack of potatoes.  Look what I can do.”

Holding him in both arms, Raditz curled him like a free weight and Chi-Chi smothered a laugh.  His family’s opinion towards her aside (one she couldn’t wholly blame them for), it was touching to see just how much they loved Gohan.

“Hey.  Where are mom and dad?” Goku asked.

“Dad got called in for first shift so he left around four.  Mom is at the deli.” Raditz shifted Gohan so he was holding him normally.

“Hi, mama,” Gohan chirped.  His face was flushed and his hair was mussed up, but he was grinning.

Raditz looked at her coolly, but he didn’t scowl or glare, which was an improvement.

“I should go in...earn that rent money mom gives me,” he said.  He turned to Chi-Chi and asked, “Text me when you and Gohan get home, okay?”

She nodded.  Everything seemed so normal.  Like they weren’t not discussing their relationship.  Like they hadn’t slept together last night. This was shifting focus, right?  Maybe they could do this.

“Actually, I was wondering if I could take Gohan into the garage for a little bit.  Everyone wants to see him.”

Goku turned to her and arched his brows.  This was her call. She ought to take him home, but truthfully she needed time to sort herself out.  Sort out all of this.

“Sure,” she said.  To Goku, she said, “You’ll bring him by this evening?”

“Of course.”

Gohan cheered and she let out a breath through her nose.  They could totally do this.

\--

“What are you doing?”

Goku stood in the open door to the garage and looked in at the mechanic shop.  Caulifla crouched in front of Gohan, speaking in Saiyan. He knew these words well.  In fact, they were the first few words he relearned when he came back from Papaya Island.

“Nothing,” she said quickly.

“It’s not nothing.”

Gohan had on his tiny pair of overalls and sat on a toolbox, a good ways away from the cars that were being worked on.  Caulifla stood up too quickly and pasted a smile on her face.

“Caulifla is teaching me swears,” Gohan said proudly.  He repeated one, a particularly devastating insult, and Goku glared at her.

She groaned and threw her head back.

“Kid, you are such a snitch.  You could never run with our old crew.”

“Of course he wouldn’t,” Turles called from where he was replacing a hubcap.

Goku pinched the bridge of his nose.  Truthfully, he was glad for the distraction.  Everything was too much right now and focusing on his friends teaching his son curse words was far easier than dissecting his relationship with Chi-Chi.  Last night had felt good, but in hindsight it just complicated matters further.

“Don’t act all high and mighty on me,” she said. “You were doing the same thing before Goku showed up.”

“We’re angels,” Raditz said, wiping his hands on a rag. “Right, Broles?”

Broly nodded his head, but said nothing, which wasn’t uncharacteristic of him.  Caulifla sighed, clearly outnumbered, and threw her arms out in defeat.

“You’re all the worst.”

Gohan giggled.  Goku squatted by him and ruffled his hair.

“You have a fun time with your uncle and his convict friends?”

“Hey!” Turles balked. “We never got caught.  That was Vegeta.”

“And we were minors anyway,” Raditz added.  He crouched down as well and gave Gohan a wink.

Gohan studied them both seriously and then asked, “Were you in caves when you weren’t supposed to be?”

Goku, at a loss, looked at his brother who shrugged.

“What?” Caulifla asked.

“Miners,” Gohan said. “You said you were miners.  Like the seven dwarves!”

Laughter rippled through the garage.  Goku kissed Gohan on the crest of his head.  The situation with Chi-Chi was tricky, but he would go through all of it just to have this wonderful little boy in his life.

“Are you goin’ to Bulma’s birthday party across the bridge?” Raditz asked. “It’s Saturday.”

He got to his feet and gave Goku a meaningful look.  His brother’s poker face was about as good as his. He knew going to that party meant Chi-Chi would be there.  She had mentioned something, briefly, when he walked her to the train station, but he hadn’t given it much thought.  Things between them were still so up in the air, even with their decree that they shift focus.

“How do you know about it?”

“Lapis invited me.”

As if on cue, Caulifla began making kissy noises.  He whipped his head to glare at her.

“Oi, Cauli,” he said roughly. “I saw you the other night on the boardwalk.  You weren’t alone.”

The smacking noises immediately faded and her eyes widened with betrayal.

“Hey!” she snapped and quickly stole a glance at Broly.

Turles, of course, picked up on it and started laughing like a hyena.  Broly narrowed his eyes at her and Goku had a feeling that he knew who Caulifla was with.

“We were hanging out as friends,” she said quickly. “And, besides, Cabba was there, too.”

Raditz cocked his head to the side and said, “Funny, because I went to the bodega later to get a forty and Cabba was  _ there _ working.”

He wished that this was the level of drama in his life again.  Dealing with Broly not wanting Caulifla to date his sister and laughing with everyone else.  When his toughest issue was reconciling his current life and the twelve years he had spent away from it.  Everything was so confusing now. Goku shook his head and looked at the one aspect of his life that made sense.  He grinned goofily at Gohan.

“These guys are silly, huh?” he asked.

Gohan nodded, stifling a giggle.

“How about we go to grandma’s for a sandwich and I get you a juice before I take you to your mama?”

“Okay.”

He held his arms out and Goku scooped him up.

“We’re heading out,” he said. “Have fun with...all of this.”

Raditz broke his laughter off and looked at him.

“Are you going?  ‘Cause I don’t wanna be on a train for an hour with just His Royal Highness.”

Vegeta was invited too, then?

He shrugged. “I dunno.  I’ll let you know.”

His brother didn’t look convinced, which was fine because Goku had no clue either way.  He let the others say goodbye with Gohan while he thought it over. Maybe he would go. He could let it be normal.  It wouldn’t be too hard.

\--

“Names?”

The bouncer stared at him and it made Goku remember that no clubs in Saiyan Town have bouncers or names on a list.  The bartender checked your ID when you sat down at the bar and that was that. Sometimes there were people who would stand around and make sure that no one was popping off, but it was usually just a patron who didn’t want to deal with assholes.

“Raditz Anserina,” his brother said.

He sounded uneasy, which meant that he was as nervous as Goku was.  Vegeta, who spent more time in West Park than any of them, said his name with practiced ease.  Goku got to his turn and internally grimaced.

“Uh, it might be under one of two names.”

The bouncer didn’t seem convinced.

“Goku Son?”

He waited and then the man crossed his name off of a list and he lowered his shoulders.  This was difficult. Technically, after Gohan died, he went back to being Kakarrot Anserina, at least legally.  Truthfully the bureaucracy of it all was confusing, but he had been four and then sixteen and it had all been handled by everyone else.

An honest to God elevator swept them up to a VIP suite that overlooked the dance floor.  Goku, in his button-up and jeans, began feeling supremely underdressed. The music was quieter up here.  He noticed a lack of crowds, though, even at the entryway, where people lined up were being turned away.

“She rented out the club,” Vegeta explained.

Raditz let out a low whistle. “Imagine bein’ that loaded.  I could buy mom and dad a new car.”

On the train ride over, his brother informed him that their father’s car had broken down on the way home from work and even Fasha couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it.

“Hey!”

Bulma ran over, moving easily even on her spiky heels.  She was dressed in a metallic dress that ended at the tops of her thighs and cut low.  She immediately wrapped her arms around Vegeta’s neck and kissed him.

“Happy birthday,” he said gruffly. “My present is my dick and you’ll get it later.”

She gave a soft laugh. “So romantic.”

She gave a nod of greeting to him and Raditz and dragged Vegeta off to properly introduce him to everyone.  Goku watched with a twinge of jealousy as she called him her boyfriend.

“Hey, babe.”

Lapis came up in a similar fashion and pulled Raditz down for a kiss.  Goku watched again, wishing things were that easy for him. Granted, Bulma and Vegeta’s situation wasn’t  _ easy, _ but they seemed to be on good footing at least for now.  He sought out Chi-Chi and found her sitting in the leather booth talking to a blonde woman who bore a striking resemblance to his brother’s boyfriend.  She maybe noticed him staring because she gave him a small smile and a wave.

Things between them were still so raw and worrisome.  They needed to clean up that mess, but how. They couldn’t unring a bell.  Chi-Chi couldn’t take back what she did and he hadn’t one hundred percent forgiven her yet.

Shit, this was all so confusing.

He looked to his brother for help but Raditz hadn’t come up for air yet.  Goku decided to just pull his pants up and go say hi. Bulma had joined Chi-Chi and the other woman back at the booth and a guy whose hair looked like it belonged in a shampoo commercial had Vegeta caught in conversation.

“Hey,” he said. “Happy birthday.”

He addressed Bulma, but he was looking at Chi-Chi.

“My birthday’s in November.”

He laughed nervously. “I know.  I meant...Bulma.”

The birthday girl in question gave him a sympathetic look and, true, maybe he deserved it.

“I’m glad you came,” Chi-Chi said. “Come sit.”

He perched on the edge of the booth until the blonde woman shooed him out so she could stand.

“I’m going to find the bottle guy,” she said in a flat voice and, wow, she even  _ sounded _ like Lapis. “I’m going to ask my brother what he wants if he and his boyfriend haven’t asphyxiated each other with their tongues yet.  You want anything?”

It took Goku a moment to realize that she was talking to him.  She had also said brother, which explained the similarities between her and Lapis.

“Everything’s included,” Bulma assured him. “Get what you want.”

He looked at Chi-Chi who was tearing up a cocktail napkin and nodded.

“Whiskey neat,” he said even though he normally stayed away from hard liquors.  With everything, though, he felt like he could use it.

“I’ll have a vodka cranberry with a twist,” Chi-Chi said.

He nearly laughed.  They were apparently on the same page.

\--

“It’s my birthday!” Bulma yelled at her doorman drunkenly.

“Happy birthday, Miss Briefs,” he said with practiced professionalism.

Vegeta caught her by the shoulders, drunk himself but not nearly as inebriated as she was.  She broke free and ran to the elevator. He followed her and let her capture his lips in a sharp-tasting kiss as they waited for the elevator to come down.  The night hadn’t been terrible. Bulma introduced him as her boyfriend and he finally met the guy who had been her ex, who was getting married in the winter.  Yamcha had been nice, but clearly wanted to feel him out since he undoubtedly knew their entire history over the course of the summer.

But it was good.  It was normal.

Normal.  This was a real relationship, wasn’t it?  He just had to try not to cock it up, right?  Shit.

The elevator arrived and Bulma pulled him in by the front of his t-shirt.  She pressed him against the wall as they pashed like two teenagers. The elevator dinged to signal the floor and no one else was apparently up at this hour except for them and the doorman.  Doorman, shit. He remembered seeing that the first night he wound up at her place what felt like a lifetime ago. The kind of money he used to have. Maybe more.

Fuck.  Fuck.

He was drunk.  He needed to get away from that.  Not think about it for once in his goddamn life.  Bulma’s tongue curled into his mouth and he found it easier to push it back.  Bulma slumped against her door but somehow managed to unlock it.

“Thanks for coming,” she said, sounding breathless.  That made sense. She had all but sprinted any chance she got.  He forgot how lively and energetic she got when she was drunk.

“Of course.”

“Thanks for--fuck.  Just c’mere.”

She pulled him in and kissed him once more.  The clashing taste of the alcohol they had been drinking had faded and now it was just spit and whatever remained of her flavored lipstick.  Not exactly romantic, but his mind was swimming.

“I deserve birthday sex,” she proclaimed loudly. “Birthday sex with my boyfriend!”

“Of course,” he said, trying to sound normal, but his voice echoed weirdly in his stuffed up ears.

Bulma led him towards the bedroom and he wondered if it was that easy.  They were dating--boyfriend and girlfriend. They just had to try not to fuck it up.  He tugged his shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor as he approached the bed.

Maybe they could make this work.


	11. Chapter 11

Goku walked to the table in the corner, sloshing glasses of beer held between his two hands.  A little bag of bar peanuts was clenched in his teeth and he spat it out next to the glasses the second he put them on the table.

“I’m so glad you aren’t a server,” Vegeta grumbled, dabbing at the spilled beer with a cocktail napkin.

“Oops,” he said, trying to sound like his usual self.

Things were so off lately, he felt like he was becoming some kind of stranger.  Thoughts of the awkwardness with Chi-Chi plagued his mind over everything else. Maybe he didn’t have many worries before or what worries he  _ did _ have were completely washed away by this.

“Hey, let’s make a toast.” Turles lifted his glass of beer. “To Vegeta.  For finally getting a girlfriend.”

Vegeta scowled but lifted his glass with the others nonetheless.  Goku couldn’t help but eye his roommate in envy. It was a bit rough but he and Bulma were on a good path.  They were “official” and all of that. What did he have? A fantastic night and then an awkward aftermath. Confused feelings for a woman who lied to him, who kept him from his son.  But that sounded so unfair at this point. She screwed up and he had no idea when she would have told him if they hadn’t run into each other on the beach, but she  _ had _ and he had Gohan, someone he would never want to give up.  And she was making up for it. She was trying so hard.

“Where’s Cauli?”

Turles looked around the table and gestured to an empty chair.  Broly bristled, muttering something into his pint glass.

“What’s the deal?” Raditz asked. “Like, why is it so bad if she dates Kale?  Isn’t it better than someone who’ll ghost her or treat her like crap?”

Broly sighed and tapped his finger on the rim of his glass.

“It’s that I tried to keep Kale from the crap we got up to as kids and Caulifla is just like us and.” His lips drooped in a frown. “I’m afraid she’s going to end up like me--getting caught doing drugs behind the Lincoln Memorial.”

Turles snorted as he took a sip of his beer.

“You did that?”

Broly shrugged with one shoulder. “Well, either that or it was some really good shit and I was looking at a penny.”

Another laughter rippled at the table, this time Goku joining in.  He didn’t have that shared history of juvenile delinquency and actual crimes, and he often felt left out.  Not of being party to illegal activities but the time spent together. Another reminder of being away from them, his family, his culture.

Alright, maybe he did have issues outside of Chi-Chi.

“So what are we doin’ this weekend?” Turles asked.

“I have a date,” Vegeta said.  He grimaced slightly as he said it as if he was surprised that the words left his mouth.

“Work,” Cabba said, tugging at a stray thread on his woven sweatshirt. “And semester B finals are soon.”

Broly shrugged and didn’t answer, which meant that he was probably working.  Raditz emptied the entire back of peanuts in his mouth and waited until he was done swallowing to respond.

“I have a date, too,” he said. “Lapis is taking me to this bougie place to have dinner with his sister and her husband.”

Turles raised his brows. “Wow.  Gettin’ serious. When’s he gonna meet Gine and Bardock?”

Raditz waved his hand at him. “He already has.”

That was a surprise.  Goku had no idea that his brother had already introduced his boyfriend to their parents.  Where was he? Wrapped up in his own drama, probably.

“How’d that go?”

“Fine, until dinner.  I told mom he was a vegetarian so she just used her sauce, but the sauce was pork-based, right?  Lapis took two bites and then had to run to the bathroom to puke and. He didn’t quite make it.”

“Oh, no!” Cabba said, putting a hand over his mouth.

Raditz nodded, cringing as he did. “I mean, it ended up fine and he actually called one of those steam-clean people for the carpet the next day, but shit.”

The others kept laughing.

“So what are you doing?” Turles asked, once the mirth died down.  It took Goku a second to realize that he was talking to him. “My first weekend off in two months and these chucklefucks are all busy.”

He shrugged. “Probably spending time with Gohan.”

All of a sudden, he felt someone’s eyes on him.  He knew his brother was staring at him and so he tipped his glass to his mouth to avoid his gaze.

“What?” he asked innocently.

“What’s the deal with you and his mom?”

That sure was the question, wasn’t it?  He shrugged again, trying to play it cool.

“There’s no deal,” he said. “Chi-Chi and I are just, like, co-parents.”

He made sure he didn’t betray himself and look at Vegeta when he spoke.  He knew that they had slept together.

“Uh-huh.  So you two didn’t fuck last week?”

He almost yelled at Vegeta for telling him, but he figured that that probably wasn’t the case.  The more likely truth was that Raditz had simply figured it out. Maybe even at Bulma’s birthday party.  People wrote him off, but his brother  _ was _ fairly perceptive when he wanted to be.

“What?” he asked again, widening his eyes and hoping the bewildered expression would help his case.

Everyone else at the table was silent, all clearly listening.

“Did you or did you not fuck?”

Goku sighed and felt his shoulders drop.

“Yeah,” he said.

Raditz grinned victoriously, apparently pleased that he put it together.  He knew that an entire discussion was going to happen and he didn’t want it to, at least not in front of everyone else.  He decided to change tactics.

“So,” he said, speaking quickly. “You think if we tell that cashier at ABP that Vegeta has a girlfriend now, we can safely go back there?”

He got Vegeta punching him in the arm for his efforts, but his brother dropped the Chi-Chi subject for now to join in on laughing with the others and he was glad.

\--

Raditz wound up walking home with him.  Vegeta had taken off earlier after getting a text message, presumably from Bulma.  The heat was still unrelenting, even at night, even though September was just a couple weeks away.  Even the seabreeze wasn’t any help. Goku chewed the inside of his cheek, trying to think of the right words to say.

“So, things are going pretty well with Lapis, huh?”

Raditz regarded him for a moment and then smiled, big and wide. “Yeah.  I’m a little surprised considering, y’know, my track record of douchebags but.  He makes me happy.”

Goku nodded as they waited for the light to turn.  Or, rather, he would have, but his brother started jaywalking once he noticed there were no cars.

“I’m glad,” he said once he caught up halfway through the crosswalk. “You should be happy.”

“So should you.”

Goku nearly tripped.  What did he mean by that?  They turned at the next corner towards the apartment building where he and Vegeta lived.

“Listen,” Raditz said.  He sighed and rushed his fingers through his hair before speaking again, “I know I was giving you a hard time in there, but what’s the actual deal between you and Chi-Chi?”

If only he knew.  Goku shrugged. Whatever was going on between them had to be fixed and fast if they didn’t want it to affect Gohan.  He remembered the day they had spent at the boardwalk and how good it felt.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

What did he want?  His emotions were too tangled in his head to figure out what he wanted.  When they slept together, he said he just wanted to show her that he was forgiving her, that he had feelings for her and that he knew.  But had that been a mistake? Should they have stopped themselves? He remembered the sensation of being inside her again, of feeling her against her, of  _ kissing her, _ and no--it wasn’t a mistake.

“I’m not happy with what she did--I mean.  Obviously. But.” Raditz shook his head as they came to a stop outside of his apartment. “But if you want to be with her, I’ll let up.”

“Really?”

He nodded.

“Yeah.  Like, if you forgive her, it doesn’t matter what we think and.  There has to be something there when you were together. And why you wouldn’t shut up about her for five years.”

Again, he was reminded when he came to his parents’ house after his grandpa died.  How his brother seemed disinterested in having a little brother again after twelve years of being an only child.  Until he found out that he  _ hadn’t _ been an only child.  Every day, they missed him and felt his absence.  That was when he finally began to bond with him. Goku smiled.

“Thanks.  Really.”

He didn’t know exactly where he stood with Chi-Chi or how he was going to approach anything between them, still, but he was glad to have Raditz by him.  The apartment door didn’t lock, just opened into that sad courtyard with its scrubby plants, cigarette butts, and old beer bottles.

“Are you walking home?” he asked at his door.

Raditz nodded. “Yeah.”

He didn’t like the sound of that and they had just bonded.

“Stay,” Goku said. “Sleep on the couch.  It pulls out. Very fancy.”

He laughed.

“I’m a big boy,” he said, flexing his arm. “I can make it home.”

Goku shook his head, resolute and glad to have a firm stance on anything.

“Get inside, Radi.  Go on.”

He relented, of course, because the apartment he lived in near the garage was a walk over some streets that weren’t safe to tread this time of night.

“So what are you gonna do with that whole thing?” Raditz asked.

He paused to let out a grunt of effort and he tugged the bed out of the couch.  Goku thought of it, of his warring thoughts, of how good last week was and how awkward it was afterwards.  He shrugged.

“I have no idea.”

\--

It occurred to Bulma that she didn’t actually remember how to be in a relationship.  She and Yamcha split for the last time years ago and she had filled the void in her life with random hookups that were eagerly reported by gossip blogs that had nothing better to do.  The actual mechanics of a relationship were lost on her.

She  _ knew, _ though, what things had gone wrong in her relationship with Yamcha.  She could just avoid doing those things: the possessiveness, the jealousy, the trust issues...right?

“It’s been four years,” Yamcha said. “So probably.”

She sat with him and Tien in their apartment while the two of them went over their wedding budget.  Their place was nice, cozy. Tien was a Civil Rights lawyer and Yamcha had middling fame and wealth as a minor league baseball player bolstered by the job Bulma got him at Capsule Corp being a legal assistant for their absolute phalanx of lawyers on beck and call.  Back when they dated, Yamcha had been the first boy she dated outside of the rarefied bubble of her social circle. He was from a poor family and wound up at WCU on a baseball scholarship.

Tien frowned down at the spreadsheets and let out a sigh.  He lifted a hand to tap Yamcha on the shoulder, saw they were talking, and dropped it.  Bulma realized that she probably should have felt bad that she was intruding, but Yamcha was her best friend after Chi-Chi.  And he wasn’t going through a Whole Thing so he was easier to talk to at the moment.

“I still can’t believe that he is an  _ actual prince, _ though,” he said. “Like...only you.”

“Was,” Bulma corrected absently.

As much as he seemed hover around West Park to see a life he could have lived and how often everyone called him “Your Highness,” Vegeta didn’t seem to wear his former title with pride.  Maybe he thought it was useless since there was no chance of him going home. Maybe. He was still zipped up about a lot. Especially his past. Or his time in jail. Or his childhood. Maybe it was just too hard.  Too painful.

“Was.  Whatever.” He waved a hand. “I’m just--wow.”

This really wasn’t why she was here.  She wanted to know his viewpoint on where the romantic aspect of their relationship crashed and burned.

“Babe,” Tien said in a quiet but urging voice. “We need to figure this out.”

Bulma almost wanted to tell him that the wedding was still over three months off, but she had a feeling that that wouldn’t go over well.

“I’m just worried,” she said instead. “Like, I haven’t had a serious relationship since, well, you.”

Yamcha made a sympathetic face at her.

“I mean, I’m pretty great.”

She fought the urge to roll her eyes. “Yeah, you’re fantastic.  Ruined me for romantic entanglements until now because I was  _ sooo _ hung up on you.”

He pursed his lips and waggled his eyebrows at her and Bulma had to laugh.  Tien, meanwhile, looked more and more disgruntled.

“I’m just--”

Finally, he seemed to snap because Tien smacked his hand down on the sheet of paper.

“Enough,” he said, not yelling but not keeping his voice at its usual timber either. “You need to stop upending all of your emotional turmoil on my fiancé!  He isn’t your therapist and we have shit we need to do. Not everyone is invested in the Bulma Briefs Saga, okay?”

Back in college, Tien had a bit of a temper on him but apparently had “centered” himself as he entered his mid-twenties and was far more chill.  Apparently the old firecracker was in there somewhere.

“I--”

“Hey, hey,” Yamcha said, hands out in a mediating gesture. “Bulma’s my friend.  We’re just talking.”

She shook her head.

“No, Tien’s right.  This isn’t your problem.  It’s mine.”

Yamcha didn’t bother hiding his surprise at her selfless act.  Truthfully, she just didn’t want to get snapped at again, but her reason sounded more magnanimous.

“I’ll leave you two to your budgeting and just figure it out on my own.”

Tien shared the look of surprise and stammered out, “Th-thanks?”

Even if she didn’t fully mean it, Bulma knew that she ought to.  She was an adult--twenty-eight now, in fact--and had to figure this out on her own.  Or maybe with Vegeta. Maybe they could go on a date. She nearly smiled at the thought.  They had never been on a real one, had they? She would have to bring it up.

She could do this.  They could do this. She wouldn’t make the same mistakes again.  Right?

\--

Chi-Chi sighed as she sent the text message.  She felt bad, of course, but it had to be done.  She looked back to Gohan where he was curled up on the couch and then back at what she sent.

**(You):** _Going to have to cancel today.  Gohan has a summer cold :( probably picked it up from a kid at storytime_

Her sweet baby had awoken this morning with a temperature, stuffed up nose, headache--everything.  She noticed him saying his throat hurt at dinner last night, but it had apparently escalated to a full blown cold overnight.  Chi-Chi had done what she’d always done and brought him into the living room and folded up a towel on the couch so he could lie down.  Then she gave him a blanket, put on one of his favorite shows, and brought him a bowl of ice chips.

She was checking the cabinets to see if she had any of his children’s cold medicine left, when her phone vibrated.

**(Goku):** _oh no!  tell him to feel better and that daddy loves him_

She sent back a few emojis and her confirmation that she would.  Things flowed so easily between them when they let them. Usually it was about Gohan but sometimes they could forget the gulf that was between them and it was almost like before.  Almost.

Chi-Chi returned to her search of the cabinets and cursed inwardly.  She was out of Gohan’s medicine.

“Daddy?” she called.

Almost immediately, her father was in the kitchen.

“What is it?”

She gestured to the cabinet and said, “Can you keep an eye on Gohan while I run to the drugstore to get him some medicine?”

“Of course.”

She smiled.  One thing about this whole ordeal was her father’s support.  He was there for her during her pregnancy, helped take care of Gohan, and never judged her.  Never asked any questions. Questions like who his father was.

She grabbed her purse and stepped into her shoes, giving both her father and her son a kiss before heading to the door.  She wanted to get there and back as quickly as she could.

“Mama?”

Gohan’s voice stopped her just shy of the door.  She turned.

“Yes, baby?”

“Daddy coming today?” he mumbled.

“Oh, no, sweetheart.  You’re sick.”

He sniffled and burrowed into his blanket.

“He can stay here and watch my shows with me.”

His dark eyes were pleading, but Chi-Chi didn’t want to make Goku come all the way over here, paying to go on the train, just to sit and do nothing.

“We’ll see,” she said to be diplomatic and stave off further questions until she got him some medicine.

That seemed to pacify him for the moment, at least, and he went back to watching the kid-friendly humpback whale documentary Chi-Chi had put on for him.  She took the opportunity to leave so she could hurry to the elevator.

The drugstore was only three blocks from her apartment so she opted to walk.  Her brisk pace would probably get her there faster than the midday traffic honking and fuming on the street next to her, making the late August air even hotter than it was already.  She was sweating by the time she got to the drugstore. She was also in a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt along with a pair of sneakers she had left at the door. Chi-Chi knew she looked a mess, but if obnoxious jerks wanted to take her picture, they could.  Getting Gohan his medicine was far more important.

Even so, when she heard girls not at all disguising the fact that they were talking about her at the end of the aisle, she listened in.

“No, that’s def Princess Mau.  Her dad owns all of those steakhouses.”

“Fire Mountain Steakhouse,” her friend said. “It’s super good.  We went there for my grandma’s birthday.”

“Whatever,” the first girl said. “I heard she got knocked up by some guy in a band when he was touring and never told him.”

“Nuh-uh,” a third chimed in. “It was that dude who Bulma Briefs used to date.  The baseball player.”

“No, it’s Lapis Gero’s baby,” the second girl said.  She gasped and added, “Did you see the spread he did for Nylon with his sister like forever ago?  I still have it on my wall. Sooo hot.”

“C’mon.  Everyone knows Lapis Gero is...y’know...”

She tuned them out as their conversation turned away from incorrect musings on her son’s paternity and onto her friend’s (very open and public) sexuality and concentrated on grabbing the right things.  She knew Gohan liked that honey medicine, and he would need Vick’s. She found children’s cold medicine in a berry flavor she knew he didn’t hate and brought it to the counter. She knew that correcting them was to no avail and would only serve to annoy her further.  It would also keep her from getting back to her son.

Chi-Chi paid and left the drugstore, leaving the girls to their gossip about her appearance, her friends, and whatever else, and headed home.

She entered the lobby of her apartment and stopped when she saw someone standing there, just inside the door.  She nearly dropped the plastic bag with the medicine in it.

“Goku?”

He had come here?  His text had been sent less than forty-five minutes ago.  Had he sent it from the train?

“Hey,” he said, an uneasy smile on his face.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

She wasn’t angry, just confused.  Goku rolled his lips in and then shrugged.  Chi-Chi was suddenly very aware of her sweaty state and her outfit but--did it matter?  Who cared how he saw her? He’d seen her in less and it wasn’t like she was trying to impress him.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I just wanted to make sure he was okay.  I guess I could have, uh, done FaceTime or something…”

She nodded. “My father’s with him now.  I was getting him medicine.”

Another beat of silence and she chewed her lip.  She remembered Gohan’s previous request and, well, if Goku was already here...

“Do you want to go up and see him?” she asked. “He’s just watching some of his shows.  I’m sure he’d love to do it with you.”

He smiled. “I’d love to.”

Together, they walked to the elevator and Chi-Chi was very aware of his body so close to hers.  She took a steadying breath as she pressed the button to send them up. It was thankfully empty at this odd hour of the afternoon and so no one else would be subject to the awkwardness between them.  She watched the elevator’s slow ascension and wished she didn’t live on such a high floor.

“Did you get him Vick’s?” Goku asked.  He gestured to the bag and he was smiling.

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“Grandpa Gohan always used that on me.  He said it would cure anything.”

Chi-Chi laughed. “My father said the same thing.”

This was the ease she thought of, when it was almost like back then.  Maybe they could get back to it. They had work to do but, maybe. She wanted that.

“Goku…”

“Chi…”

She turned to him, intent on saying  _ something, _ but whatever it was died in her throat when he kissed her.  It was a gentle peck on the lips, but it was definitely a kiss.  After a moment’s hesitation, she kissed him back.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so a lot of Life things happened at once and i got burnt out and could barely write a thing for weeks, least of all anything i had currently running. but i finally got this chapter done, and on a thursday at that! thanks for everyone who followed this fic and will stick around to read the ending lmao

Bulma felt like she was cruising on some kind of high, like when she was in college and she and her friends (barring Chi-Chi) would try new, designer drugs to break the jade casings around their eyes.  This, though, was wholly organic. If she wasn’t in the midst of it, she’d feel foolish for being so dreamy, but she was happy.

She and Vegeta just worked together, in a weird way.  Never would she have thought that the grumpy, emotionally stunted guy who pushed past her at an auto shop during what was probably the most inconveniencing day of her life would wind up being her boyfriend.

In fact, she was so pleased at her life currently that walking into a bar to find one of her exes barely even fazed her.  The man in question didn’t share Yamcha’s enviable rank of being an ex she was still friends with, mostly because they had had a relationship built on friendship and trust and this guy had been a good time for one week and a dismal bore for the next until she finally dumped him.

Lapis, her companion for the day, was quick to point out that this bar was far too cool for him, since he never liked this dalliance of hers due to his mild but pervasive homophobia and Lapis’s low threshold for losers.

Any other day, Bulma would have laid into him for daring to enter a bar she favored for no reason other than to make a scene but today she was in such a good mood she just waggled her fingers at him and snagged a two top table in a corner.

“What was his name again?” Lapis asked. “I just remember hating him.”

Bulma waved a hand. “It doesn’t matter.  He was one of those times I was trying not to just have hookups and make a relationship work and I chose the wrong person.”

“It began with a T, didn’t it?”

Did it?  At this point, she mostly only knew his face and remembered his rank personality.

“I still have the worst ex,” he said and she was inclined to agree.  Zarbon cheating on him with five different people and lying to him about wearing a condom trumped any regretful dalliance she'd had.

One of the two bartenders arrived with their drinks without them having to order them--a perk of being regulars and being the Who’s Who of West Park, she assumed.  Her own middling popularity and fame went without question, but even years after quitting, Lapis’s photos _still_ showed up in editorials.  Bulma sipped her gin and tonic and placed it back on the cocktail napkin.

“So,” she began. “You’re probably wondering why I asked you out.”

Lapis smirked as he put dropped the reusable straw he kept with him into his vodka and cranberry juice.  As he spoke, he began ticking each point off on his fingers.

“Chi-Chi’s going through an existential crisis about her babydaddy still, you legitimately feel bad about Tien calling you out for constantly distracting Yamcha, and my sister has class.”

“That’s not it.”

“Sure.” He puckered his lips at the tartness of his drink and swirled the straw through the red liquid. “Have you had Birra Moretti?  Raditz loves it and I’ve been drinking it lately. It’s really good.”

Bulma wasn’t sure where that came from, but honestly it helped her be able to segue into her next point of conversation.

“Speaking of him, what do you think of arranging a get together of everyone?  I want my friend group and Vegeta’s friend group to, like, coalesce. Gel.”

He arched his brows. “And you want, what?  My help?”

_Maybe…_

“Not really,” she said. “I figured, you’re dating one of his friends so that could help, I dunno, ease any awkwardness with anyone else.”

She had met Vegeta’s friends and while she had been in turmoil over her feelings for him at the time, she could draw conclusions.  Caulifla was loud, Cabba was polite, Broly was quiet and hated the concept of Caulifla dating his sister and Turles was a lot. Goku, of course, everyone knew by reputation alone even before his appearance at her birthday party.  Raditz, too, they knew even if Krillin still tried in vain to make himself taller whenever his brother-in-law’s boyfriend came around.

“Didn’t we already do this introduction thing?” Lapis asked. “It’s boring to do it again.  At least when I met Raditz’s parents, I threw up on their floor.”

“You did?”

Despite how easily he said it a moment ago, he looked chagrined while he nodded.

“I sent a steam cleaner to the house, but it was embarrassing.  But they like me.” He paused to take a sip of his drink before saying, “I mean, look at my competition.  It’s not like I had Raditz’s kid and hid him from him for five years.”

“Lapis!”

To defend her best friend’s honor, Bulma balled up a napkin and threw it at him.  He batted it down.

“Sorry,” he said, and it was in his usual, flat voice but he sounded a bit like he meant it.

It _was_ a bad situation but one Chi-Chi was trying to fix.  And Goku, too, if her finding them in bed together a week or so ago was any indication.

“I just want to get everyone together and have a good time.  Maybe we can meet somewhere in midtown.”

Lapis’s expression soured. “Really hitting the ‘meeting in the middle of our different tax brackets and economic disparities’ on the head there, aren’t you?”

Bulma sighed.  She forgot how vexing it could be when she talked to Lapis.  Lazuli would give her a straight answer or else not say anything at all.  He was all sarcasm and wit like everything he said was being written by Neil Simon or someone more current who specialized in arch, witty comments spoken by gay ex-models.

“Then what do you suggest?”

“Here or there,” he said. “And dinner or something.  Don’t go all fancy and rent out the club. That’ll only make Turles call you a bougie bitch.”

It occurred to her that Lapis probably spent more time around Vegeta’s friends than she did because she spent so long fighting her feelings and dealing with things with him.

She crunched an ice cube in her mouth and thought over his words.

“You make a good point.”

And Lapis, being Lapis, simply smirked and said, “I often do.”

\--

It was a perfect, early September day when the city seemed to shine.  It was still warm and everything had a glisten to it. The oppressive heat had lifted and Chi-Chi had even been able to put Gohan’s jacket on.  She watched him and Goku playing from her spot on the bench. After all this, she still didn’t know where they stood. They had slept together and he had kissed her back on the elevator, but when they had gotten up to her apartment, all they had done was sit with Gohan and watch his movies while her father pretended to not want to know everything.

The entire time she was pregnant, her father never pushed her for answers about the baby’s father.  He simply cherished his grandson and that was that. As far as he was concerned, Chi-Chi was convinced that she had made a wish for a child.  However, when Goku was on their couch, stroking Gohan’s hair with one hand, she could tell he wanted to know everything about him.

But, other than that, the day progressed normally.  He didn’t try to kiss her when he left to catch the train.  And now here they were.

It didn’t help that she was well aware that they _both_ were sending mixed signals.  It was a tricky situation and she was certain that at least part of it was neither of them wanting to commit one way or another because of Gohan.  If they got together and the spark was gone or Goku truly could never forgive what she had done, it would affect him. It would hurt him. Above everything else, she had never wanted to hurt her little boy.

Or she was overthinking things as usual.  It was overthinking things and panicking that led her to leaving Goku in the dark for years.  She couldn’t do that again. She was an adult now. And the way he kissed her...the way he felt.  That was fire.

“Chi!” Goku called. “C’mere!”

It was so natural, almost idyllic, as she got up from the bench to join them.  Gohan was on his shoulders, leaves in his hair and his cheeks reddened from exertion.  A bright and sunny grin was on his face as he hugged his arms around his father’s head.

“What?” she asked.

Goku grinned and the afternoon sun hit him in a way that made him undeniably gorgeous.

“What?” she repeated.

Was this it?  Was this when they finally had their big adult discussion and made a decision?  He reached out and tapped her on the shoulder.

“You’re it!”

With a giggle courtesy of Gohan, he took off, holding onto their son’s shins to to keep him on his shoulders.  Chi-Chi stared after them for a moment before a laugh bubbled up in her throat and she gave chase.

Normally her legs had no hope of catching up to Goku’s longer strides, but he was carrying Gohan and so she was eventually able to tag him back even with his headstart.

“Mama caught us!” Gohan said with a giggle.

He held his hands out for her and Goku ducked down so she could scoop him into her arms.

“Can we play more?”

Gohan pressed his face into her neck and Chi-Chi melted.  She was so bad at denying him anything.

“I think it’s time to get some dinner,” Goku said. “Right, Chi?”

He gave her a wink and, of course, her mind went seven hundred different directions to figure out what it meant.

“Y-yes,” she stammered after a moment. “Dinner sounds good.”

She set Gohan down so he could walk between them and they could each hold one of his hands.

“What do you feel like?” Goku asked.

She had no idea, no appetite.

“You decide,” she said diplomatically.

And didn’t that say volumes?

Goku looked at her, dark eyes twinkling.  For a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her again.  She licked her lips at the thought, nervous.

“Thai,” he said finally.

Chi-Chi blinked rapidly and then nodded.

“Thai sounds good.”

Before she could even suggest a place nearby, Goku swooped down and kissed her.  Chi-Chi dropped Gohan’s hand in shock and then, reflexively, lifted her hands to his face.  When he pulled back, she stared at him.

“Why did you do that?”

“‘Cause we both want Thai.”

Frustration burned in her chest.

“Kakarrot.”

Goku picked up on the name, knowing she used it Before when he aggravated her.

“Daddy kissed you ‘cause that’s what people do when they like each other,” Gohan said sagely.  He grinned, not at all put off by this.

“He said it,” Goku said with a laugh.

The frustration remained.  How could he laugh it off? How could it be that simple after everything?

“Goku--”

He shook his head. “Listen, we can figure it out as we go.  All I know is that I want to keep kissing you. I want. I want us.”

She spared a glance to Gohan and chose her words carefully.

“And forgiveness?”

“It’s.  It’s happening.  I’m close. I…” He exhaled. “Suck at words.  So let’s eat and let’s. See where this goes.  The two of us.”

There was the sound of a tiny throat being cleared and Goku looked down to grin at their son.

“The three of us.”

Chi-Chi gaped at him for a moment before she realized: she could live with that.  They didn’t have to keep it all to heated moments and awkward silences. They had moved past that before the kiss in the elevator.  Before the sex.

“Okay,” she said. “I can do that.”

And, she thought, maybe she could.

\--

Bulma stopped at the door to the restaurant.  Vegeta bumped into her with a subdued grunt.

“What is it?”

She turned and got a look at him.  It was getting darker earlier as summer finally began to fade into fall, but the street was well lit enough for her to make out his features.

“Just.  Thinking.”

“So why did you stop?”

Bulma sighed.  Grumpy until the end.  But she liked that, didn’t she?  She liked him. She liked how he wound up on her side of town to think about what his life would have been like without the coup (he hadn’t admitted that, but they didn’t call her a genius for nothing).  She liked how she could just be with him now they finally let themselves do it. It wouldn’t be this high forever, but she hoped they could weather it. She wanted a future with him, whatever that was.

“I’m trying to be romantic, you ass!”

His lips quirked up at the corners and his eyebrows rose a half measure.

“Good job.”

She thumped him on the chest and Vegeta caught her hand gently before pulling her in for a kiss.  With how grouchy he was, she often was caught off-guard when he initiated any sort of affection or contact.

“Excuse us.”

She pulled away from the kiss to see Yamcha grinning at her.  Tien was at his side, his arm over his shoulder in his own rare display of public affection.

“The table’s in my name so you have to wait for me.”

“I think they know us,” he said.  To Vegeta, he hitched his chin and smiled. “Hey.”

“Hi.”

Tien cleared his throat for a moment and met eyes with Vegeta.  Yamcha grinned at him expectantly and Bulma wondered what that meant.

“You’re welcome to come to our wedding,” he said. “If you’d want.”

Vegeta stared back at him and, Christ, it was a meeting of the too most emotionally constipated people.  Bulma shared a glance with Yamcha, who looked like he was about to lose it.

“Sure.  Thanks.”

With that decided, she was about to suggest going into the restaurant when another voice spoke.

“So are we just meeting outside?”

Lapis was walking hand in hand with Raditz and, behind them, were the others she had seen at the auto repair shop and the bar.  Turles eyed Yamcha with clear appreciation and Broly elbowed him discreetly before pointing to Tien. She also spotted who she assumed was his sister holding hands with Caulifla.

Introductions were made and Bulma felt pleased.  Lazuli and Krillin arrived next and she was surprised when she saw Lazuli greet her brother’s boyfriend with a hug.  A shared glance between the twins let her know that things were apparently fine between them.

“Do you know if your brother’s coming?” she asked.

Raditz shrugged. “He said he was.”

She hadn’t seen Goku around Vegeta’s place for the past few days and, come to think of it, she hadn’t seen Chi-Chi either.  She hoped things were all right. In her new relationship high and the fact that that was a situation she didn’t want to touch with a ten foot pole, she was kind of neglecting her friend.

They were starting to clog up the sidewalk, which was an undeniable sin in the city, so she figured it would be fine at this point to simply move inside and wait for the rest of their party there.

“Oh, God, we’re the last ones here.”

Bulma paused again and turned to see Chi-Chi hurrying towards them.  Her hair was pulled back and she looked amazing in the red dress she wore.  As she approached, she gave her a nod of approval at her outfit. Then her words registered in her head.  We’re. She looked down, but didn’t see Gohan--and wasn’t it past his bedtime?

“Chi, wait up!”

Goku rushed to join the group and, when he stopped, gently put his hands on her waist.  Bulma was sure that her eyebrows shot straight up off of her forehead.

“I hate being late,” she told him.

“I know, I know.  My bad.”

They were smiling at each other and this--this was new.  She wanted to grill her immediately, but this wasn’t the crowd or the place.

“I’m hungry,” Turles announced. “Are we going into this bougie ass place or not?”

Bulma nodded.  Right.

“Yeah.  Go on in.”

She held the door open as they all ambled in.  When Chi-Chi passed her, she reached out to squeeze her wrist.

“Later,” she promised in a whisper. “I’ll tell you all about it later.”

Bulma nodded.  Vegeta was the last in the door and she stopped him to give him a quick kiss.  She wasn’t sure where it would lead with him, but she was happy now. And, judging by the fair approximation of a smile on his face, so was he.

“You good?” she asked.

He went to shrug but then nodded. “Yeah.  You?”

She took his hand and looked from her friends waiting in the lobby of the restaurant and then back to him.

“Yeah.  Very.”


End file.
